One of the lasting memories of the Cleveland Browns frustrating 2019 campaign came in the Week 15 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Wide receiver Jarvis Landry animatedly argued with head coach Freddie Kitchens with several very interested Browns players watching closely.
Kitchens is now gone, while Landry is having a strong season on the vastly improved Browns. They’ll face off in New York on Sunday with Kitchens taking over the play-calling duties for the Giants with OC Jason Garrett sidelined with COVID-19.
Landry diplomatically expressed his approval of the team moving on from Kitchens.
“I was not opposed to it,’’ Landry said on Thursday when asked if he wanted Kitchens to get fired by Cleveland last year. “I can only do my job and trust that the staff and the organization are going to be able to put somebody in place, whether that continued to be Freddie or Coach Kevin (Stefanski) as it is now obviously, to make sure that we can get on the right track and be a winning football team.”
When pressed, Landry elaborated a little more on his rocky relationship with Kitchens’ coaching and the disappointing 2019 season on the whole.
“It definitely was a frustrating season for a lot of people,’’ Landry said. “That’s just kind of how the NFL is. It’s kind of how it works. Each game you go into, it is any given Sunday, anybody can beat you and you have to play your ‘A’ game. I do not want to go back too much into last year, but I just did not think that the season ended the way that anybody wanted it to.”
Don’t expect any grandiose gestures by Landry or the Browns, not in the manner of presenting the ball to Hue Jackson in the infamous Bengals incident in 2018. But do expect the Browns players to try and take out some pent-up frustration against their old coach.