Freddie Kitchens was not a happy man after Thursday Night Football, and his team walked away with the win.
With just seconds to go in a huge win for the Browns — Myles Garrett put a damper on the game by removing the helmet of Mason Rudolph, swinging it wildly and hitting him in the head as both teams came out to brawl it out in the end zone.
Instead of talking about the win, head coach Freddie Kitchens faced nothing but questions about the big fight.
“We don’t condone that,” Kitchens said after the game. “Myles understands what he did wrong. He has to maintain his composure … We had five (seconds left) in the game. He understands.”
A reporter asked Kitchens if there is a “seismic problem” with the Browns as he eluded to the joint practice with the Colts in the summer where multiple fights took place.
Kitchens took offense to the question.
“I’m not smart enough to understand what you said,” Kitchens said, “so just ask me, point blank, what you’re asking.”
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The reporter continued to work his nerves and Kitchens exploded.
“I never OK fights. Did you say I OK fights? I never OK fights,” Kitchens said. “Did I want them to get after their ass? Yes, I did, but that’s not fighting, that’s not after the whistle. Between the whistles, yes. I never condone fighting on a football field because that’s penalties. I don’t coach penalties, I don’t coach false starts, I don’t coach after the whistle grabbing somebody’s facemark. I don’t coach that. So I don’t know what you’re talking about Indianapolis saying I condone a fight. That’s a penalty.”
The Browns were 2-6 at one point and looking a terrible season, but now they sit at 406, back in the AFC playoff picture, and they are still in a bad spot because of that brawl.
“You can’t lose sight of the good things that we did,” Kitchens said. “The turnovers the defense had. The offensive production early in the game. The ability to run the ball when we needed to run the ball at the end of the game. Had some lapses there in between that we need to continue to try to run the ball, but there’s a lot of good things from the game that are going to get overshadowed by this, and a lot of people are not gonna get recognition because of (Garrett’s fight).”
“We gotta stay together,” Kitchens said. “Again, when you hit times of adversity, you have run toward each other, and not away. So, just come to work and know that you have support here, everybody … You run toward each other instead of running away.”
