[clari.sports.top] Learning the coaching ropes

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.''
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