As I said in my previous post, I'll be taking a look at some of the head coaching candidates for the Browns and letting you know just how qualified I think they are for the job. As Browns President Mike Holmgren said on Monday, this is an extensive search with a lot of early candidates, so I may not get to all of them, but I'll try.
The coaches I'm talking about today is defensive coordinator of the Giants Perry Fewell. He has received permission from the Giants to interview with the Browns, but as far as I know, he doesn't have a strong connection to the Bill Walsh coaching tree that Holmgren himself is a part of.
Fewell is a defensive backs coach by trade, and has spent the last five seasons as a coordinator, 2006-09 with the Buffalo Bills and then this past season with the New York Giants. He also served as the Bills' interm head coach for the last seven games of the '09 season, where the team went 3-4 beating the Dolphins, Cheifs and Colts. The Colts game deserves an asterisk as it was week 17 and they were resting their starters for their eventual Super Bowl run, but they only lost one game by more than 7 points - a 31-3 loss to the Atlanta Falcons in week 16. I think that's fairly impressive for a team that's a perennial basement dweller in the AFC East.
For the past year, Fewell's Giants were in the top 10 in each of the yardage categories as they were 7th in total yards, 9th against the pass, and 8th against the run. However, they were 17th in points allowed, as they gave up 21.7 per game. I feel like the Giants offensive turnover problems had a lot to do with that, though, since they had the league leader in interceptions at quarterback, Eli Manning.
Depends on the way you think about it, but the Giants could be considered 5th in sacks with 46, but since there are three teams ahead of them tied with 47, I'll consider them 3rd. They were also first by far in forced fumbles with 48, 10 more than the second place New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers. They also were first in recovering fumbles, with 23. All those are good numbers, but the Giants are usually at the top of those categories every year, so I think they might have more to do with Tom Coughlin than Fewell.
A lot of people are saying that Fewell is just being interviewed for a lot of these jobs because he satisfies the Rooney Rule, but I think Fewell could be a pretty good coach for any team based on the record he had as interm head coach of the Bills. That being said, I don't think he'll be the next coach of the Cleveland Browns because he has no previous connection to Holmgren and probably wouldn't run the West Coast offense. And even though Holmgren has said that it's not a necessity, it's clearly preferable as it's a system he and GM Tom Heckert are familiar with, and Colt McCoy would run it well.
So no, I don't think Perry Fewell will be the 16th head coach of the Cleveland Browns, but I always like to hear of African-American coach getting opportunities. The more interviews he gets, the more his name gets out there, and he could end up as the next Leslie Frazier, who just had the "interm" tag removed from his title as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings after receiving numerous interviews for positions last year.
I'll be back soon with more on the coaching search. Go Browns!
~MAS
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