The Cleveland Browns seem to have a hard time hiring coaches who don’t say ridiculous things or who don’t have brash personalities. That can apply to their general manager as well. After having dumped Hue Jackson as head coach and Todd Haley as offensive coordinator, it is now up to defensive coordinator and interim head coach Gregg Williams to be the source of controversial comments, and John Dorsey can chime in whenever he likes as well.
Williams, in his second season as the Browns’ defensive coordinator, will serve in the dual capacity, presumably for the remainder of this season. But according to him, he has had ample opportunity to serve as a head coach elsewhere.
During his first press conference after being put into that role, he for some reason offered that he has had requests from 11 teams looking for head coaches, and even claimed that for four of them, they didn’t even need him to interview. They would have just given him the job.
“Since I left Buffalo, I’ve had 11 letters sent in to interview for head coaching jobs, and all of them behind the scenes I have, four of them I didn’t even have to show up, just sign the contract and come”, he said earlier in the week.
“You know what is fun about sitting in a chair and being a head coach? Coaching football”, he added. “Not coaching marketing, not coaching scouting, not coaching ticketing, not coaching analytics. Coaching football. So why would I not do that? And when people say you can’t do that and be the head coach, you don’t know”.
Williams spoke to reporters again on Thursday, and had the opportunity to clarify his unusual remarks, but he pretty much chose not to.
“Here is the deal, I probably never should have said that because I put other people on the spot”, he merely offered. “Those things were easy for me to do because if it is not right it is not right. I just chose not to do that and chose to keep doing what I was doing and got a raise every time I stayed wherever I stayed. It just is what it is”.
And, apparently, he is staying in Cleveland, which has pretty much objectively been the worst team in football over the past three years. Williams was the head coach in Buffalo from 2001 to 2003 and posted a 17-31 record, at best managing a 8-8 season in 2002.
I don’t know how many interviews he has gone on for head coaching positions since then, but I frankly can’t recall his name coming up very often, especially not since he was indefinitely suspended for running a bounty program in New Orleans that rewarded defenders for causing injuries.
