Hometown boy makes good as Kitchens gets Browns' job

Don’t be surprised if you start seeing orange and brown caps or “Dawg Pound” sweatshirts or T-shirts amid all the Alabama, Auburn, Jacksonville State and Atlanta Braves gear around here.

The reason? Etowah Countians tend to take pride in home folks’ accomplishments, and it’s been a while since they’ve gotten to celebrate an accomplishment as big as Freddie Kitchens’ hiring last week as head coach of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.

Longtime football fans will recall his days as Etowah High School’s quarterback; he was Alabama’s Mr. Football as a senior after passing for 1,640 yards and 16 touchdowns.

They’ll recall his years as the Alabama Crimson Tide’s quarterback; he passed for 4,668 yards (which ranked No. 4 at the time on the Tide’s career list) and 30 touchdowns.

The really intense fans know about the coaching résumé Kitchens has established over the last 20 years in both the college and pro ranks. (During much of that time he also conducted an annual football camp for local kids.)

He started out as an assistant coach at Glenville State in West Virginia, spent a season as a graduate assistant at LSU (under Nick Saban), then coached at North Texas and Mississippi State before moving to the NFL.

After a season with the Dallas Cowboys, he spent 11 years on the Arizona Cardinals’ staff (coaching in Super Bowl XLII in 2009) before becoming an assistant with the Browns.

Kitchens was promoted to interim offensive coordinator after a coaching change midway through the season and passed what proved to be an audition for the top job as Cleveland and its young quarterback, Baker Mayfield, showed enormous improvement and actually were in playoff contention.

He’s not going to have an easy assignment. Since rejoining the NFL as an expansion team in 1999 after the original Browns moved to Baltimore, Cleveland has had just two winning seasons, has made the playoffs only once and in 2017 lost all 16 of its games.

We think Kitchens is up to the challenge and wish him success. This is a man who, confirming his reputation for toughness, needed 10 hours of emergency surgery in June 2013 to repair a tear in his aorta — and was on the field for the start of training camp that year.

He’s a blue collar type — literally, his dad worked at Goodyear — who will fit in well in Cleveland.

For the uninitiated, the “Dawg Pound” is the east end zone bleachers at the Browns’ stadium, populated by a particularly rowdy and passionate group of fans who love their team. We don’t think they’d mind a little kibitzing or moral support from 700 miles away, from people hoping to see this particular hometown boy make good.