The Jets and Browns entered the 2019 season with some promise, but now it’s looking like Adam Gase and Freddie Kitchens will be one-and-done as their head coaches.
With a promising second-year quarterbacks and notable pieces added around them, the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns entered this season with some promise for once. But with losses on Sunday dropping them to 1-6 and 2-5 respectively, with the Browns beating the Jets for one of their victories, the heat is on head coaches Adam Gase and Freddie Kitchens.
After he was let go by the Miami Dolphins, Gase was not the most inspiring hire for the Jets. But his reputation as an offensive mind, after having worked with Peyton Manning and getting some of Jay Cutler’s best play in past stops, still followed him into working with Sam Darnold.
Darnold missed three games with mono. But the overall results have spoken for themselves, and after Sunday’s loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars Gase acknowledged he hasn’t done enough to help his young quarterback.
I feel like I haven’t helped him enough, I haven’t put him in good enough position,” “He’s doing a lot of really good things. It’s just not working the way that it should. There are a lot of things where I’m seeing him make strides and you get excited about it. You see him taking control of the line of scrimmage, making the Mike declarations — he’s on it. But when he’s making these changes and he’s right, we’re just not all on the same page.
After stepping in as interim head coach last year, and getting a great run out of Baker Mayfield, Kitchens got elevated to the permanent post by the Browns. High expectations set the team up to fail this year, and unless they make a run through a soft schedule Kitchens will surely be feeling some heat.
But after Sunday’s game, the often outspoken Mayfield seemed to critique his head coach while putting some onus on himself.
It’s just non-disciplined,” Mayfield told reporters regarding the rash of penalties, “guys not being focused on doing their job. It starts first and foremost with me, to be a leader every single down. Get our guys lined up, make sure that we’re set, we’re paying attention because if we can’t use cadence we’re hurting ourselves. Any time we try to use a double count, it seems like we’re false starting a little bit, but we’ll get the discipline part fixed, the accountability. Like I said, we’ve pointed out the problem, now we have to execute it on Sundays.
Discipline and accountability issues fall on the coaching staff, as well as the quarterback as the on-field leader. But Kitchens had never even been an NFL coordinator before being named interim head coach last year, so the broader duties may be just a little too much for him.
Barring a surprising turnaround, there’s little doubt Gase and Kitchens will each only last one season in their current jobs. It’s only a matter of if they will be fired in-season, or which of them will fired in-season first.