Berea, OH (92.3 The Fan) – Like new head coach Freddie Kitchens, Myles Garrett doesn’t mince words when he speaks.
That was evident this past week in a Bleacher Report profile of Cleveland’s pro bowl defensive end when Garrett was asked what could possibly change for him with Kitchens in charge and working under a new defensive coordinator in Steve Wilks.
“I hopefully have more freedom to be the player I want to be,” Garrett told Bleacher report. “[Former defensive coordinator and interim head coach] Gregg [Williams] was more like: ‘You win with these two moves. I don’t want to see anything else out of you.’ It’s kind of hard with two moves. I feel like you can’t always be so predictable. You can be as strong or fast as you want, but speed chop and power move aren’t always going to work. You have to mix up what you’re doing. Sometimes you have to stutter step, sometimes you have to spin inside, you have to run some games. You have to have some freedom to throw different looks at them, and we didn’t always have that.”
Kitchens’ elevation to head coach in January came as a direct result of the work he did with quarterback Baker Mayfield and the offense that led the team to five wins in the last seven weeks of the season with him as offensive coordinator and Williams, now with the Jets, serving as the interim head coach.
Williams received the first interview, but it appeared to be merely a courtesy before the team ultimately decided to elevate Kitchens.
On Saturday Kitchens was asked about what Garrett had to say.
“First and foremost, Gregg Williams was a good football coach. He has been a good football coach in the National Football League for a while, if that is the angle here,” Kitchens said Saturday. “As far as Myles is concerned, we need to get good at our craft in all areas. I think Myles will be the first to tell you that. We will give him every opportunity to master his craft, and therefore, we expect the production to go up. We expect the production to go up on the whole defensive line, the linebackers and the secondary. The production all over our football team needs to go up.”
The question about Garrett’s comment in that profile piece published this past week prompted a candid, and lengthy response from the first-year head coach following the second rookie minicamp practice about his expectation going forward.
“Moving forward, we are not worried one bit about last year on any area of last year offensively, defensively, special teams or anything,” Kitchens continued. “Everything that we have, we have to goal in mind of getting better in everything. Whether it is press-man coverage, whether it is Myles rushing or whether it is the Scottish Hammer, everybody is getting better. Last year is last year. No two teams are the same. I have said that numerous times. You are not going to pick up where you left off.
“We are not interested in revisiting last year at all. We were 7-8-1. We didn’t do [anything] last year. We didn’t win anything. We were third in the division. I don’t know where all of this is coming from. Just because the Super Bowl is our goal does not mean that is where we are right now. We are a team just like the other 31 teams, and we are focused on training camp, OTAs, minicamp and getting better when those guys are back in the building.”
The post Freddie Kitchens responds to Myles Garrett’s criticism of Gregg Williams – 92.3 The Fan appeared first on Investalist.
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