In 2019, special teams coordinator Mike Priefer was the bright spot of the coaching staff. Priefer’s units improved dramatically over their prior seasons, and it earned the veteran coach a spot with the new Kevin Stefanski regime.
Through the first two weeks, Priefer’s star has lost its luster. Cleveland’s return units have done nothing, while the coverage teams have been nothing short of awful. The quippy coordinator faced the media for the first time since training camp on a Zoom press conference on Thursday.
Priefer did not mince words when asked about the problems on kickoff coverage. Cleveland is surrendering an average of 37.8 yards per return on kicks and 13.0 on punts. Last year the Browns allowed 20.4 and 7.6, respectively.
“We have not covered kickoffs with the same speed and tenacity that we did a year ago. We have lost leverage where we did not lose leverage last year. We have not tackled well, like we tackled well a year ago,” Priefer said.
He also offered no excuses for his unit’s poor performance thus far.
“Does that mean we need some reps under our belt before we get going? That is no excuse,” Priefer explained. “Everybody is in the same boat. No one had preseason games last year so we will never use that as an excuse. We just have to play better. We have to play faster. We have to play more aggressive. We have to keep our hands. We have to keep leverage. We have to do the little things better than we have obviously been doing thus far in order to be a weapon for this football team.”
He did express some pleasure with new kicker Cody Parkey, who was perfect in his extra point efforts in Week 2. Parkey did boot one kickoff out of bounds, and that stuck in Priefer’s craw, too.
“He made his PATs. That was a start. That was huge,” Priefer said of Parkey. “Could he kick off better? Sure. He had a couple nice ones. The one out of bounds is unacceptable. We will never accept that. That was a mistake. Other than that, I thought he kicked off OK – good enough for us to win with. Like I said, his PATs all went right down the middle. Protection was good, and the snap and the hold were good. We have to keep going in that direction.”
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