Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reports that the Browns’ head-coaching search could come down to an internal battle of wills between GM John Dorsey and CSO Paul DePodesta.
According to Florio, the thinking is that Dorsey prefers to hire Freddie Kitchens while DePodesta prefers to hire Vikings OC Kevin Stefanski.
In the end, Florio says Bakey Mayfield could ultimately break the tie for Cleveland.
On Tuesday, Brad Childress stepped down as the head coach of the AAF Atlanta Legends, according to FootballScoop.com. Mary Kay Cabot notes that Childress has “strong ties” to Dorsey and made Stefanski his assistant quarterbacks coach back in 2009 when he was with the Vikings.
According to Ian Rapoport, Kitchens and Stefanski are considered to be the two finalists for the Browns’ head-coaching job, which explains why Stefanski is back in Cleveland on Tuesday for a second interview.
Stefanski, 36, began his NFL coaching career as an operations intern with the Eagles back in 2005. He was later hired by the Vikings as an assistant to head coach a year later.
Since then, Stafanksi has held a number of positions including TEs coach, RBs coach and QBs coach before being promoted to the team’s interim offensive coordinator after they fired John DeFilippo midseason.
Kitchens, 44, began his coaching career back in 1999 as the RBs/TEs coach for Glenville State. He worked for a few schools before being hired by the Cowboys as their TEs coach for the 2006 season.
Kitchens later joined the Cardinals and held a few jobs including TEs coach, QBs coach and RBs coach before joining the Browns as their RBs coach and associate HC. After the team fired Todd Haley, Kitchens took over as offensive coordinator.
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