The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Mayfield McCarthy ‘would be great’
Does someone already on general manager John Dorsey’s speed dial jump to the head of the line of candidates to become the next head coach of the Browns?
Not necessarily, but the research shouldn’t take long.
Connecting the dots from Dorsey to Mike McCarthy, fired Dec. 2 after 13 years as Packers head coach, is easy. Dorsey was in the Packers’ front office for 21 years. He was the Packers’ director of college scouting from 2000-11 and their director of football operations in 2012. McCarthy was the Packers’ head coach from 2006 until Green Bay lost to Arizona while the Browns were losing in Houston. McCarthy was 125-77-2 with the Packers.
The careers of Dorsey and McCarthy were spliced from 2006-2012, which means Dorsey knows exactly the type player McCarthy likes for his team. Dorsey began aligning the Browns’ front office with Packers personnel last winter by hiring Eliot Wolf as assistant general manager and Alonso Highsmith as vice president of player personnel.
Dorsey won’t limit his search to McCarthy, and this isn’t to say Gregg Williams should be out of the running just because the Browns lost in Houston.
But if Dorsey believes strongly in McCarthy he better not wait long to hire him, because other teams will soon be looking for head coaches, too: Carolina, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Cincinnati and the Jets could be making changes.
This is the first time Dorsey has led a coaching search. He risks outthinking himself with a prolonged hunt if he believes McCarthy is better than other candidates such as Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell, Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh or Chiefs special teams coach Dave Toub.
Dorsey doesn’t have to discover the next great head coach to prove he’s smart. Mike Tomlin was the Buccaneers defensive backs coach from 20012005 and the Vikings defensive coordinator in 2006. Steelers Director of Football Operations Kevin Colbert (now general manager) hired Tomlin in 2007 and Tomlin is still there.
Sometimes the smart move is the safe move.
Center JC Tretter played three seasons in Green Bay before signing with the Browns in 2017. Tretter says McCarthy would be a great fit for the Browns and that McCarthy could get the most out of quarterback Baker Mayfield.
“I think they would do great,” Tretter said. “(McCarthy) started working with Aaron (Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers) when Aaron was a rookie, too, and Aaron’s developed into a hell of a player, so I think that relationship would be fine.
“I see a lot of similarities between Aaron and Baker personality-wise, competitiveness, and that’s all the things that Aaron came in with too when he was a young player, so I think they’d work well together.”
A connection between Dorsey and McCarthy works the other way, too. It would be easy for McCarthy to trade his green Packers parka for a brown one because of the familiarity he has with Dorsey.
The Packers made the playoffs every year from 2009-16. But they were 7-9 last season. They are 4-7-1 – same as the Browns – this year.
So has the game passed McCarthy by? That’s usually the conclusion some reach in situations like this. Would the Browns be hiring a stubborn coach unwilling to adapt to the spread offenses currently in vogue?
Tretter says that would not be the case.
“You can’t be somewhere forever,” Tretter said. “You can look at the anomalies and that’s (Patriots head coach) Bill Belichick and the ones that have lasted for even longer than he has. But eventually teams move on and people move on,” Tretter said. “But I don’t think the game has passed Mike by. I think he’s still a great offensive mind. I haven’t been there for two years now, but when I was with him, it was awesome to work with him.”
Tretter might get that opportunity again beginning next month.