Tim Benz: Browns could supplant Steelers as 'Team Turmoil'

There is some controversy in Cleveland.

Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens is mad.

He’s upset that former offensive line coach Bob Wylie — the “Hut Gut” — is saying that Gregg Williams should’ve been named head coach in Cleveland and that quarterbacks coach Ken Zampese did “all the coaching” during Cleveland’s turnaround in the second half of the 2018 season.

Keep in mind, Wylie wasn’t retained by Kitchens, so he has an ax to grind. But the comments set off Kitchens. The new Browns boss is threatening to fire any assistant coach that leaks any inside information to the media.

Freddie Kitchens said that the days of inside information or unnamed sources in the Browns organization are gone. #Browns pic.twitter.com/JAumZXh424

— Hayden Grove (@H_Grove) August 5, 2019

“The days of inside information and the days of unnamed sources and stuff like that have ended,” Kitchens said. “So you’re not going to get any information like that, ever. Anybody. And I ever see it, they’re fired, immediately. And that’s how we’re running this organization.”

OK. Great. Here’s the problem. Wylie isn’t a current assistant. And he isn’t unnamed. He made his comments live on national radio. No unnamed sources here.

Via Cleveland.com, Wylie was in the hospital recovering from an ankle injury when he found out Kitchens decided not to retain him.

“My daughter called me and said, ‘Hey, dad, you just got fired today,’’’ Wylie said, according to Mary Kay Cabot. “That’s the first time I heard about it. I was laying in a hospital bed. They packed up my office and they put my office in storage because I was still in the hospital.”

According to Wylie on CBS Radio, Kitchens used his offensive assistants to land the job interview, then threw them under the bus once he got the job to make it look like some changes were being made.

Kitchens retained one guy. Receivers coach Adam Henry.

Guess why. He coached Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. at LSU and Beckham with the New York Giants.

So those guys have a “yes, man” on the coaching staff. That’s nice.

Maybe “team turmoil” is heading a few hours northwest of here.