“I aspire to be a head coach. I would love to be a head coach,” Priefer said.
The question Thursday came as a follow-up to an inquiry about his career aspirations shortly after he was hired by Freddie Kitchens to turn around the team’s special teams unit, which had been historically good but fell on hard times in recent years.
“The way it was phrased when you guys spoke to me back when I was first introduced is I want to be the best special teams coordinator Cleveland has ever had,” Priefer said. “That is my goal.
“Now, would I like to be a head coach? Absolutely. Who wouldn’t? I would love to be up in front of the team and be the leader of that team, but right now, my job is to be the best special teams coordinator that I can be for this football team and for this franchise. I relish that job.”
Priefer interviewed in 2013 for the Bears head coaching job before Chicago hired Marc Tretsman.
“The interview was great because I knew I wasn’t going to get it,” Priefer said. “I wasn’t nervous at all. I looked good. My wife dressed me, and I looked the part. I even wore a red tie, a power tie.
“I thought I knocked the interview out of the park. I was relaxed and confident, and if it happens, it happens. I am only 53 and I am still a young buck, but I know I have a lot of gray [hair] – a lot of wisdom.”
He got his chance – at least for one night – when Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer underwent eye surgery and asked him to step in. They lost.
“I got zero sleep,” Priefer said. “It was a Thursday night game. It was a great experience. I learned from it. We lost a tough, two-point loss. As my children continue to call me, they call me 0-1. ‘What’s up, 0-1?’ That is my career head coaching record – 0-1.”
“It is frustrating,” offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “Obviously, it falls on us coaches, it falls on the players and falls on all of us to obviously get the play in and hear it clearly in the huddle. It all starts with the alignment and assignment because that gets you beat. Before any mismatches whoever you play, if you are not getting lined up and you do not know what you are doing, it does not matter who you play – you will not be consistency, you will be choppy with what you do.
“It is frustrating because then you put Baker up against it in terms of the clock and trying to get us in the right protection and those kind of things. It has been frustrating and it lends yourself to be choppy, lends yourself into burning timeouts when you do not need them and taking penalties when you do not have to. It is something that has been an issue and something we have tried to correct.”
Center J.C. Tretter tried to provide some context as to where the difficulty might be stemming from.
“We run a lot of different personnel and then we run a lot of similar plays out of that personnel that way we can kind of be dynamic,” Tretter said. “There’s always going to be some, not miscommunications, but some little mix ups. That’s going to happen sometimes. We’ve seen what we’ve done when adding Nick [Chubb] and Kareem personnel and then having all of that kind of built together with all the other personnel groups. So there’s going to be some of that stuff. That’s the quarterback’s job, to make sure everybody is in the right spot so I think Baker’s done a good job of that.”
“I think Sheldon will be fine. He will be good to go,” Kitchens said.
Richardson, who has started 13 of the 14 games he’s appeared in this season, has been asked to step up in the absence of suspended defensive end Myles Garrett and injured end Olivier Vernon to provide some rush from the edge in addition to working inside.
“I have been happy with Sheldon,” Kitchens said. “He gets to Sunday, and he is all energy, passion and plays hard. I do not know if I have seen a D lineman play as hard as Sheldon plays. Makes plays all over the field. You will look up, and he is over there on the sideline making plays and that is on a consistent basis. That is exactly what we thought we were getting and that is what we have gotten.”
“We have accomplished a lot of things this year. The fact that two years ago this franchise was 0-16 and we are sitting here at 6-8 and we are complaining about it [says something],” Priefer said. “I am more of the glass half-full guy, so I am a really positive person and I look at the good things. You want to learn and correct the things that we haven’t done, and you want to build on the things we have done well.”
Limited: WR Odell Beckham Jr. (groin), WR Jarvis Landry (hip), LB Tae Davis (knee), RB Dontrell Hilliard (knee), RT Chris Hubbard (knee), S Eric Murray (knee), DE Olivier Vernon (knee), CB Denzel Ward (ankle), OT Kendall Lamm (knee)
Full: DE Porter Gustin (neck)