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Freddie Kitchens: vaguely employed

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What grade to you give the Browns for hiring Freddie Kitchens as their next Head Coach?

  • A+

    Votes: 38 20.8%
  • A

    Votes: 57 31.1%
  • A-

    Votes: 15 8.2%
  • B

    Votes: 18 9.8%
  • Less than that, but I'm also not fun at parties.

    Votes: 55 30.1%

  • Total voters
    183
I honestly think Monken could be a valuable asset for a guy like D.K. Metcalf, should the Browns go his way in the first or second round. Guy is coming from an Air Raid type system at Ole Miss. Just me spewing words on a page.
 
All good stuff. Anxious to see if he can do to Njoku what he did for Howard who was fantastic this year

Njoku was already pretty close to as good as Howard this year after Kitchens took over.
 
So I just realized you can buy access to Football Outsiders DVOA database and charting stats for $90. I'm a pig in shit.

Football Outsiders have a stat called DVOA. DVOA is widely considered the best regression-controlled stat for the NFL. I.E., this is the RPM/BPM for football. Here is their summary.



I.E., DVOA looks at a players yards gained, controls for his own team's performance, the other defense's aptitude, and the other defense's performance, and creates an adjusted statistic.

This should make people excited -->
-Browns' Offensive DVOA Under Hue/Haley (Weeks 1-8): -21.01%
-Browns' Offensive DVOA Under Kitchens (Weeks 9-17): +23.66%
-Difference: 44.67%

-Browns' Offensive Pass DVOA Under Hue/Haley (Weeks 1-8): -23.95%
-Browns' Offensive Pass DVOA Under Kitchens (Weeks 9-17): +53.96%
-Difference: 77.91%

So what does this mean? Under Hue/Haley, a generic replacement team against the same opponents we played against would have gained ~21% more yards than we did. Under Kitchens, though, that same replacement team playing those same opponents would have gained ~24% less yards than we did.

This gets even crazier when you just look at the passing game. Under Hue/Haley, a generic replacement team against the same opponents we played against would have gained ~24% more yards than we did. Under Kitchens, though, that same replacement team playing those same opponents would have gained ~54% less yards than we did.

I was basing my earlier analysis of Kitchens on the data I had available. But this totally changes my mind. This stat is good - I have checked the math myself, it is consistent. Our offense, even adjusting for our opponents, totally transformed under Kitchens. Since 2010, the only two teams to make even close to the same transformations in their passing offenses were the 2015 Seattle Seahawks (+72% from Weeks 1-8 to Weeks 9-17) and the 2017 San Fransisco 49ers (+57% from pre- and post-Jimmy G.).

This Browns transformation under Kitchens was historic. I'm so pumped.

@priceFTW @TyGuy @Randolphkeys @MoFlo @AZ_ @thedarkness2332 @CBBI @The Human Q-Tip
@The Wizard of Moz
Catching up on this thread, great post. Absolutely unbelievable the size of the impact we had from the coaching change

It's criminal that we had Hue Jackson around Baker for any period of time let alone half an NFL season. Glad we fixed it though
 
Good stuff from Peter King's Monday morning column on the Kitchens hire:

The Kitchens Hire


One by one in the early days of the new year, coaching candidates were grilled by the Browns’ braintrust (owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, GM John Dorsey, strategist Paul DePodesta, EVP J.W. Johnson, personnel people Eliot Wolf, Alonzo Highsmith, Andrew Berry), the interviews lasting six to eight hours apiece. Interim coach Gregg Williams first, then ex-Colts and -Lions coach Jim Caldwell, Minnesota offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, Saints assistant head coach Dan Campbell, Pats linebackers coach Brian Flores, Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus … and last, interim offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens.

The Browns were looking for a leader of men, a respected man who knew their team, and not the best available offensive mind, which was the flavor of the month. They were looking for the best coach, in terms of presence, building a team, and scheming a modern offense and defense. That is why I respect what Cleveland did in hiring Freddie Kitchens, who, despite his success as offensive coordinator in the second half of the season with Baker Mayfield, had to be better than six other men who spent at least six hours apiece with the interviewers over the course of eight days. This is a coach no one currently in the organization knew—and I am not exaggerating—when he was hired to coach the Browns’ running backs last winter. I don’t know if Kitchens will succeed or fail. But I do know this: The Browns worked to identify strong candidates, ignored the most obvious one (Mike McCarthy, despite his closeness with Dorsey) on the market, and did not know at the start of the process three weeks ago who they would hire.

If you think the fix was in for Kitchens, consider that the buzz around the team, before the Kitchens interview, was that Stefanski of the Vikings was the favorite. They loved Stefanski’s interview and thought he’d be a good match for Mayfield. Then Kitchens had a blunt and boffo interview, and Stefanski and Kitchens were the two leaders in the clubhouse, and they came back for second interviews, and Kitchens won it.

Shouldn’t that be the way teams hire coaches? Denver GM John Elway told me last week, effectively, that the fix was in on Vance Joseph. Elway had “pre-drawn” (his wording) the case for Joseph entering the 2017 coach search after Gary Kubiak, and Elway said he’d never do that again. In this case, if the Browns had a list of 100 names on their head-coach list at the start of the 2018 season, Kitchens would not have been on it. Ditto GM Chris Ballard in Indianapolis last year; he didn’t have Frank Reich anywhere near his list at the end of the 2017 season, and Reich ended up with the job, and he led the Colts from 1-5 to a playoff victory in 2018.

I asked Kitchens last week for the short version of what he said to the Browns’ committee when he met with them Jan. 7.

“The Cliff’s Notes version … okay,” Kitchens said Friday from Cleveland, the southern twang still prominent in his voice 21 years after he left the University of Alabama, where he played quarterback. “I am going to get to know the players. I am going to ask the players their opinions, and I am going to listen to their input. I am going to convince them that we’re all in this together, and I can’t do it without them. They are going to trust me and respect me. Once they know you trust them and respect them, you can have tough conversations. It’s nothing personal. It’s just real. It doesn’t mean you’re a players’ coach. If I’m a players’ coach, I never would have been able to work for coach [Bill] Parcells [in Dallas in 2006]. I’ll make every decision based on the team and on the player. This is truly, probably, the ultimate people business. Coaches like to make it about themselves, but coaches aren’t playing the game. It’s a players’ game. A coach might survive two or three years without the buy-in of the players, but without that, it’s over and they’ll have to move on to the next team.”

Pause. “That’s about it,” Kitchens said. “When I had the chance to run the offense this year [after Hue Jackson was fired in midseason], I felt the players respected me and trusted me. I haven’t invented the wheel. Trust me. It’s football, and a lot of people are great at teaching and coaching football. But this team, this offense, I felt we had respect for each other and I felt like we were getting results.”

Kitchens was amazed at the people the Browns called to fact-find about him. Adrian Peterson and David Johnson (coached by Kitchens in Arizona in 2017), Patrick Peterson and Larry Fitzgerald(who witnessed him for several years), Carson Palmer (coached by Kitchens from 2013-16), Kurt Warner, Bill Parcells (Kitchens was on his last Dallas staff in 2006) … and A.Q. Shipley.

A.Q. Shipley?

“I see this number come up that I don’t recognize, and I almost didn’t answer,” said Shipley, a center for the Cardinals since 2015. “Then I pick up, and this guy says, This is so-and-so from the Cleveland Browns, and I was hoping I could ask you a couple of things about Freddie Kitchens. I thought, ‘Wow. They must be serious about Freddie, calling me.’ But I love Freddie. And I told them that. When I got to Arizona, Freddie was the QB coach at the time, and for the first time I’d seen this in football, the quarterback coach, the offensive coordinator, the quarterback—Carson Palmer—and the center—me—would meet during the week. Communication between the center and the quarterback is so important for protections and other stuff, and Freddie understood it would be a good idea to communicate multiple times every week, between Wednesday morning and Saturday night. It was a great idea. They also asked me how I thought Freddie would be up in front of the full team. I told ‘em he’ll be great with players. I think they must have already known that, from how Freddie did with Baker Mayfield late in the year.”

“What are you calling me for?” Parcells told the Browns. “You been around this guy for the last nine months. You know him.”

When Kitchens heard Cleveland would interview six coaches before him, and that he’d be last, he loved both of those things. When he heard all the people they’d called about him, he loved that too.

“I really was wanting them to have a thorough search,” Kitchens said. “One reason and one reason only: I wanted the organization, and I mean everyone in the room, to think, ‘He’s our guy.’ I didn’t want them to have any doubt. I didn’t want them thinking they wished they’d interviewed other guys. So if I got the job, I got the job because I was the best man. I got it for the right reasons. That’s what impressed me about this process. I didn’t know John Dorsey when I got here a year ago. He didn’t hire one of his friends. He didn’t hire someone to win the press conferences. He hired who he thought was the best coach for his team. He saw something in me I was always hoping someone would see—13 years coaching in the NFL, seven years coaching in college, just doing my job, trying to make players better. Nothing else. If nobody ever saw that, I’d have been fine, because I always liked my job.”

Curious: Mayfield was a top 10 NFL quarterback the second half of the season under Kitchens. What did Mayfield think of him getting the job?

Coachspeak. In-house. Time to be the head coach.

“You’ll have to ask him,” Kitchens said. “But I am pretty sure he’s not disappointed.”
 
"He saw something in me I was always hoping someone would see—13 years coaching in the NFL, seven years coaching in college, just doing my job, trying to make players better. Nothing else. If nobody ever saw that, I’d have been fine, because I always liked my job.”

That whole interview was awesome, but this absolutely jumped out at me. First, because I believe he meant every word of it. It's the most reasonable explanation for how he could simultaneously be so respected, yet so unknown to so many people.

And second...because that attitude is so fucking rare. How many people have any of us ever worked with who truly thought that way, and acted accordingly? He clearly had the ambition to be a head coach, but he wouldn't politic for it and didn't want it - including the huge pay raise - unless everyone else was on board. And if he didn't get it, he'd have been fine with keeping his old job.

What an incredibly well-grounded guy. Also, the part about how even with Alabama, he'd meet with the QB and the center for game-planning. So many of these guys have huge egos, and think they have all the answers. Freddie's the opposite - he's perfectly willing to get good ideas from anywhere.

I'm thinking that the Browns were very fortunate to find this guy.
 
That whole interview was awesome, but this absolutely jumped out at me. First, because I believe he meant every word of it. It's the most reasonable explanation for how he could simultaneously be so respected, yet so unknown to so many people.

And second...because that attitude is so fucking rare. How many people have any of us ever worked with who truly thought that way, and acted accordingly? He clearly had the ambition to be a head coach, but he wouldn't politic for it and didn't want it - including the huge pay raise - unless everyone else was on board. And if he didn't get it, he'd have been fine with keeping his old job.

What an incredibly well-grounded guy. Also, the part about how even with Alabama, he'd meet with the QB and the center for game-planning. So many of these guys have huge egos, and think they have all the answers. Freddie's the opposite - he's perfectly willing to get good ideas from anywhere.

I'm thinking that the Browns were very fortunate to find this guy.
I teach my first class of the semester tomorrow. I usually dress in business attire on days I teach. So, I've got a question:

Has Kitchens redefined the male dress code enough where I can where a sport coat, nice shirt and pants, while also wearing a Browns hat?

It's so unfair we need to wait 7.5 more months to watch this team. I cannot wait.
 
I wrote a bit about quantitative analysis, Kitchens, and the Browns' future offense.

https://sportsbystats.com/2019/01/2...ntitatively-right-choice-for-the-2019-browns/

The Cleveland Browns finished their 2018 season 7-8-1. Undoubtedly, this is an improvement over their past decade. At the end of the season, though, John Dorsey, Paul DePodesta, and the rest of the Browns’ front office had to decide on the team’s future coach.

Ultimately, the team settled on Freddie Kitchens. Kitchens became the offensive coordinate halfway through the season, never called plays before, and is only 44 years old. He is not the sexy choice.

But Kitchens absolutely is the correct choice to lead the Browns.

Qualitatively, many commentators have noted how Kitchens inspires the offense, is beloved by the players, and earned the job through his leadership ability. In today’s Monday Morning QB, Peter King addressed this in detail:

The Browns were looking for a leader of men, a respected man who knew their team, and not the best available offensive mind, which was the flavor of the month. They were looking for the best coach, in terms of presence, building a team, and scheming a modern offense and defense. That is why I respect what Cleveland did in hiring Freddie Kitchens, who, despite his success as offensive coordinator in the second half of the season with Baker Mayfield, had to be better than six other men who spent at least six hours apiece with the interviewers over the course of eight days. This is a coach no one currently in the organization knew—and I am not exaggerating—when he was hired to coach the Browns’ running backs last winter. I don’t know if Kitchens will succeed or fail. But I do know this: The Browns worked to identify strong candidates, ignored the most obvious one (Mike McCarthy, despite his closeness with Dorsey) on the market, and did not know at the start of the process three weeks ago who they would hire.

This is impressive – but as a numbers guy, I find the qualitative reasoning to be no more than old school, non-empirical analysis. Consequently, I chose to dig into the numbers. And initially, I was disappointed.

Pro Football Focus (PFF) uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses to grade player performance. Baker’s PFF grade under Hue Jackson was 71.83 and 75.5 under Freddie Kitchens. Consequently, per PFF, Baker did not play significantly better under Kitchens.

Moreover, the pass blocking did not seem to improve. Under Todd Haley, the Browns’ PFF pass blocking grade was 78.63, and under Kitchens, it is 76.1.1 Using stats that people understand, including Tyrod Taylor, the Browns averaged almost five more pressures allowed per game under Hue/Haley, but it is only one more pressure per game discounting Tyrod.

By counting stats and position-specific numbers, the Browns had not really improved under Kitchens. But then why were they scoring more and converting offensive drives at a much higher rate? Was it all an illusion? I decided to dig deeper.

Why The Real Quantitative Data Makes Me A Huge Freddie Kitchens Fan:

Football Outsiders is a website that uses advanced quantitative methods (primarily regression analysis) to estimate team efficiency and impact while adjusting for a variety of factors including opponent, score of the game, and position on the field. They have a stat called Defense-Adjusted Vale Over Average (DVOA). DVOA is widely considered one the best regression-controlled statistics for the NFL. Here is their summary.

...
-Browns’ Offensive DVOA Under Hue/Haley (Weeks 1-8): -21.01%
-Browns’ Offensive DVOA Under Kitchens (Weeks 9-17): +23.66%
-Difference: 44.67%

-
Browns’ Offensive Pass DVOA Under Hue/Haley (Weeks 1-8): -23.95%
-Browns’ Offensive Pass DVOA Under Kitchens (Weeks 9-17): +53.96%
-Difference: 77.91%

So what does this mean? Under Hue Jackson and Todd Haley, a generic replacement team against the same opponents we played against would have gained roughly 21% more value per play than the Cleveland Browns. Under Kitchens, though, that same replacement team playing those same opponents would have gained roughly 24% less value per play than the Cleveland Browns.

This gets even crazier when you just look at the passing game. Under Hue Jackson and Todd Haley, a generic replacement team against the same opponents we played against would have gained roughly 24% more value per play than the Cleveland Browns. Under Kitchens, though, that same replacement team playing those same opponents would have gained roughly 54% less value per play than the Cleveland Browns.

Thus, under Kitchens, the Cleveland Browns were generating close to an additional 78% more value per pass than they did under Hue Jackson and Todd Haley.


This advanced data shows just how dominant Kitchens’ offense is. The Browns’ offense, even adjusting for our opponents, underwent a complete transformation under Kitchens. Since 2010, the only two teams to make even close to the same transformations in their passing offenses were the 2015 Seattle Seahawks (+72% from weeks 1-8 to weeks 9-17) and the 2017 San Fransisco 49ers (+57% from weeks 1-8 to weeks 9-17 ).


Therefore, Kitchens’ playcalling demonstrates a scenario where counting statistics fail to appreciate an offense’s dominance.


Bluntly, Freddie Kitchens led the Cleveland Browns through a historic transformation.

Looking Towards the Future:


Freddie Kitchens – after officially being hired as the new Cleveland Browns’ head coach – brought in Todd Monken to be offensive coordinator. Monken was the offensive coordinator for Tampa Bay this year, embraces analytics, and runs a contemporary version of the air-raid offense.

While Kitchens will still be calling plays, Monken will be a nice voice in game preparation, and is a great choice to unleash Baker Mayfield. Jake Burns has a phenomenal article at Cleveland.com analyzing how Monken and Kitchens will merge their offenses.

The air-raid offense emerged, in large part, because of the BYU passing attack in the 1980s. Hal Mumme, watching this offense, established high school and college teams that, while having less resources to recruit elite talent, beat the best teams in the sport by passing the ball frequently and for long yardage.

Essentially, the air-raid views running the ball as providing less yards per attempt than passing plays. Thus, rather than using the run to establish the pass, air-raid offenses use the pass to establish the run. Additionally, it uses a relatively small number of actual plays, but runs them out of various formations and with different pre-snap movement.

While Hal Mumme was building his offense, his lead assistant was Mike Leach, who then went to Texas Tech and Washington State and had massive success. Todd Leach took the BYU offense, which eventually became Mumme’s offense, and developed it even further. After his success, Leach’s assistants adopted his offense and brought it to the NFL. Monken, who never worked for Mumme or Leach, still was influenced by their collegiate success and system.

Thus, under Kitchens and Monken, the Browns are going to pass frequently, and probably have one of the most efficient offenses in the NFL.

In short, under Monken, the Buccaneers had the fourth fewest third-and-long situations in the NFL, threw the ball more on first down than any team in the NFL, threw the ball more on second down than any team in the NFL, and his runningbacks only ran into a stacked box (eight or more men) the eighth fewest times in the NFL,

Thus, Browns fans should expect an even more efficient offense that uses a spread field to maximize Baker Mayfield’s and Nick Chubb’s performances.

The Browns’ Future and Beyond:

For the Browns’ decisions, while moving on from Sashi Brown’s front office, continue to embrace quantitative analysis; or, at the very least, are making decisions that math supports. Kitchens’ and Monken are some of the most progressive and innovative minds in football that both have recent success.
 
I teach my first class of the semester tomorrow. I usually dress in business attire on days I teach. So, I've got a question:

Has Kitchens redefined the male dress code enough where I can where a sport coat, nice shirt and pants, while also wearing a Browns hat?

It's so unfair we need to wait 7.5 more months to watch this team. I cannot wait.


I'd say if you're bald you could totally get away with it. Kitchens has a bald man's privilege with hats
 
I teach my first class of the semester tomorrow. I usually dress in business attire on days I teach. So, I've got a question:

Has Kitchens redefined the male dress code enough where I can where a sport coat, nice shirt and pants, while also wearing a Browns hat?

It's so unfair we need to wait 7.5 more months to watch this team. I cannot wait.

Teaching is different, and I am out west where we are much more casual, but in a business environment I show up to work in shorts and a t-shirt all the time. We have no dress code and really only care about the bottom line.

I am balding, but chose not to where hats into work, they are a paint to where in a 10-11 hour day in my opinion.

I know I answered this seriously to a half serious question, but I will say wear what you are comfortable with. I am not in front of college students trying to make an impression, I am mainly meeting on the phone and when I meet in person, I explain the casual environment.

Oh and all my t-shirts are sports t-shirts, today I am wearing one of my Indians shirts....ironic since my office is technically on an Indian Reservation on the Scottsdale border, lol.
 
It's so unfair we need to wait 7.5 more months to watch this team. I cannot wait.

Nice change, isn't it? In previous years we were like, "Thank God that's over, now we can move on to free agency and the draft." We looked forward to the off-season. Now we're chomping at the bit to watch some Browns football. It's a great feeling.
 
Teaching is different, and I am out west where we are much more casual, but in a business environment I show up to work in shorts and a t-shirt all the time. We have no dress code and really only care about the bottom line.

I am balding, but chose not to where hats into work, they are a paint to where in a 10-11 hour day in my opinion.

I know I answered this seriously to a half serious question, but I will say wear what you are comfortable with. I am not in front of college students trying to make an impression, I am mainly meeting on the phone and when I meet in person, I explain the casual environment.

Oh and all my t-shirts are sports t-shirts, today I am wearing one of my Indians shirts....ironic since my office is technically on an Indian Reservation on the Scottsdale border, lol.
Yeah, I’d never seriously wear a hat, at least this early in the semester. Later on in the semester I would consider it, and I’ve done it before, but not when I’m trying to listen to me this early.
 
Yeah, I’d never seriously wear a hat, at least this early in the semester. Later on in the semester I would consider it, and I’ve done it before, but not when I’m trying to listen to me this early.

I would say do whatever you want, but if it were me (I never wore a hat when teaching but that was when I was a green grad student) I think I would wear it on Fridays only or something.

Make a habit and tradition. Let the kids (and co-eds) know you are workin' for the weekend and that you like football like everyone else.
 
I would say do whatever you want, but if it were me (I never wore a hat when teaching but that was when I was a green grad student) I think I would wear it on Fridays only or something.

Make a habit and tradition. Let the kids (and co-eds) know you are workin' for the weekend and that you like football like everyone else.
Yeah, I only do it later in the semester when there is a big game or something. I wouldn’t do it this early and on the first day.

God damn you, Freddie.
 

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