clarinews@clarinet.com (BOB KEIM, UPI Sports Writer) (01/19/90)
_U_P_I_ _S_p_o_r_t_s_F_e_a_t_u_r_e Cleveland's Bud Carson: CLEVELAND (UPI) -- When Bud Carson succeeded the legendary Bobby Dodd as the head coach at Georgia Tech, the straight-talking defensive wizard likes to say he was ``no more ready to be a head coach than to fly.'' Considering that assessment, it is no surprise to learn he was fired after five years on the job. When he got another chance as a head coach with the Cleveland Browns in 1989, Carson was better prepared for the problems and decisions that come with being in charge of 47 men and a staff of assistant coaches. Still, despite being in the NFL for 16 seasons before taking over the Browns, Carson said there was plenty that caught him by surprise during his first year on the job. ``Experience is still the best teacher,'' Carson said. ``I can look at Chuck Noll running a football team and I can look at Bobby Dodd in college run a football team and I can look at a lot of great coaches I worked for. Those people all taught me something, but there's no substitute for being there and doing it yourself.'' Coming to Cleveland as a rookie coach put Carson under more pressure to win than most first-year coaches. The team was coming off four straight playoff appearances and hired a new coach because the old one, Marty Schottenheimer, refused to make the moves the front office thought necessary to get to the Super Bowl. He was a hit right from the start, installing an aggressive 4-3 defense that scored four touchdowns in the first two weeks of the season. But the team was inconsistent, losing three of four games in one stretch and going winless in four games in another period. The Browns, 9-6-1 in the regular season, rallied to win the AFC Central Division title despite winning only two of their final six games, and beat Buffalo in the playoffs before losing to Denver in the AFC Championship game. ``I think it (reaching the AFC Championship game as a rookie coach) is probably more unusual in the fact that it's a first-year coaching staff,'' Carson said. ``We don't have a coaching staff in place like San Francisco had. We had to merge and mix with this football team as a coaching staff, and they had to mix with us. ``I guess if there's anything I'm proud about this season is the fact that we were able to maintain what they had before and get to where we were able to get to in the playoffs. It's no fun to lose, but there are a lot of positive things about this season.'' At the start of training camp, Carson, as he was as an assistant coach, was quick to criticize his players to the media, a habit he quickly broke after knocking veteran cornerback Hanford Dixon, one of the most popular players on the club. Carson also learned that although he was a defensive specialist, he could not ignore what his offense was doing. He had no choice in his offensive coordinator, as Marc Trestman was hired before Carson, but eventually found that he had to have more input offensively. ``You can't totally focus in on just the defense because you've got to make the important decisions,'' he said. ``You get spread a little thinner than I thought you would. It is different, in that no matter who the head coach is, he's got to be more on one side of the ball than the other, unless he takes the role of an overseer. ``You got to work and keep in touch with players and I didn't do a good enough job with that, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. I will have that corrected.'' For most of the year, Carson's defense was dominating. In the last month of the season, it showed signs of breaking, then in the playoffs the Browns allowed 67 points and nearly 1,000 yards in offense. At 58, Carson knows that he doesn't have long to get to the Super Bowl as a head coach. ``I think the older you get, the more depressed you get about losing a big ball game,'' he said. At the same time, however, his experience tells him that the only answer to failure is to work harder, plan better and give more of himself next season. The loss to Denver had some observers speculating that the rest of the divison, with Pittsburgh's marked improvement, had passed Cleveland by. That's a theory that angered Carson. ``When I hear people say Pittsburgh looks like the team of the `90s and Houston's in great shape and Cincinnati's in great shape and we're supposedly down at the bottom of the division, well I don't believe that and I don't think the people around here believe that,'' he said. ``I'm here to say that I know we'll be a better organization next year.'' _A_d_v_a_n_c_e_ _w_e_e_k_e_n_d_ _J_a_n_._ _2_0_-_2_1