What if coaching questions

WHAT ABOUT THOSE ‘WHAT IF’ COACHING QUESTIONS?

By STEVE KING

I wrote recently around this theme: What if coaching questions – interim Browns head coach Gregg Williams wins six or seven of these last eight regular-season games?
I said then – and I’ll repeat it now – that I don’t think it will happen. But at the same time, don’t look now, for he is 2-1 following back-to-back wins, including Sunday’s 35-20 beatdown of the Cincinnati Bengals.
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What if?
Yes, what if?
Now there are more “what if coaching questions” with the Browns.
Former Browns offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, now out of football, said he would keep current Cleveland offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and that he would consider keeping Williams as defensive coordinator if he gets the head-coaching job.
So, then, what if Arians does indeed get the job?
I don’t think he will, but what if he does? It’s certainly not out of the question, because he has previous head-coaching experience with both the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts.
And he loves Cleveland. He has made it clear that if he coaches again, it will be only with the Browns.
That he would keep an assistant coach, or coaches, presently with the team is not some kind of epiphany, either. It happens more than you think, even though most new head coaches fire all of the assistant coaches when they come in and hire their own people.
But what if the current people are better than the people the new coach wants to bring in? Does he have a change of heart?
Former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano did. He interviewed all of the assistants he inherited when he came to Cleveland in 1978, and he kept some of them.
“I would have been foolish to get rid of a good coach simply because he wasn’t my guy,” Rutigliano has told me any number of times. “I tried not to have any coaches who felt their job security was protected just because they knew me. This wasn’t going to be any good-ol’-boy situation with me.”
And it worked out pretty well with Rutigliano as coach. Remember the Kardiac Kids?
More: Cleveland Browns coaching profile