CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Don’t fall in love with Gregg Williams and Freddie Kitchens. We’re talking to you, Browns fans, and you, John Dorsey. Because what you have seen the last two weeks isn’t fantastic football coaching.

It’s competence. It’s that old-fashioned ability to get out of your own way and let players do what they do best.

The trick-play, occasional wishbone stylings of Kitchens, the one-time Arizona Cardinals tight ends coach calling NFL plays for the first time, are less a testament to his offensive innovation and more an indictment of the intractable boorishness of the guys who got fired.

The last two weeks proved just how awful Hue Jackson and Todd Haley were together, allowing their ego-driven ineptitude to derail the rookie season of Baker Mayfield. All the Browns have said in praising Kitchens are things that any players would say about any qualified NFL playcallers who don’t let their own stubborn arrogance get in the way of what’s best for the team.

If the Browns could do it, they should fire Jackson and Haley again.

They can’t. But they also can’t let Jackson and Haley have any effect on the search for the next staff. Retaining Williams, who is benefitting from the contrast to the second-worst coach in NFL history, would be doing that.

I don’t think Dorsey will allow that, regardless of what happens in the win column. Whatever Williams and Kitchens accomplish in the final six games, the Browns can do better next season, no offense intended. It’s the same thing that happened when Luke Fickell took over as interim coach at Ohio State in 2011. The Buckeyes could have won the national title under Fickell, and the right decision for the Buckeyes still would have been to hire Urban Meyer.

There’s no Meyer out there, a guy with rings who sees this as his dream job. But the Browns now, just like the Buckeyes then, can’t let short-term good, or even great, outweigh long-term potential.

Williams, with seven stops as a defensive coordinator, an 18-32 record as a head coach and Bountygate on his resume, isn’t your future, Cleveland. Because this is all part of the whole plan.

It’s a quarterback-coach league, but only one of those jobs comes with choice. The Browns didn’t recruit Baker Mayfield. Losing produced Baker Mayfield. He didn’t pick Cleveland, Cleveland picked him.

But a coach? To get a good one, you must woo. That means a rebuilding team must thread the needle on losing enough to get the pick to get the quarterback, while still managing to avoid total hopelessness, and then putting its best foot forward to grab the next coach.

The record won’t get the right coach to come here. But the roster will.

The Browns have that roster, and this is another reminder that the Browns' plan is working in a lot of ways. We won’t derail the conversation with a debate about the front office of the past, but here’s a reminder about what happened to the first three picks that were actually owned by the Browns in the 2018 NFL Draft based on their record: Mayfield, Austin Corbett, traded for Tyrod Taylor. Denzel Ward and Nick Chubb were picked after deals brought those picks to the Browns, and then Dorsey cashed in.

Now, you take Mayfield, Chubb, Ward, Myles Garrett, Damarious Randall, Joe Schobert, Jabrill Peppers, a solid interior offensive line, a bunch of cap space and get a coach with them.

ESPN’s Bill Barnwell wrote Thursday that 10 NFL jobs could be open after the season, and he ranked Cleveland at No. 5 on the list of most attractive gigs, behind Green Bay, Baltimore, Seattle and Detroit. The Haslams as owners held the Browns back in his mind, and that’s fair.

They fire quick.

But the roster has never been in better shape in the Haslam tenure. They should be able to let this coach stick around. And they did bring back a guy who went 1-31 and give him another half a season.

So throw out a wide net. The fish are there, and you’ll like something you pull onto the deck.

The best candidate may not be on anyone’s list right now. Mike Tomlin, after one year as a coordinator, was a surprise pick for the Steelers in January of 2007 over other frontrunners. Pittsburgh talked to him and loved him. Sean McVay wasn’t the obvious choice for the Rams, and Rams beat writer Rich Hammond told me on my Takes By The Lake podcast that the L.A. front office wasn’t inspiring confidence during that search before finding a smart guy who made their choice easier.

So maybe it’s a coordinator like John DeFilippo or a former head coach like John Harbaugh or a college coach like Lincoln Riley. Ryan Aber, the Sooners writer for the The Oklahoman, told me on my Buckeye Talk podcast this week that he thinks the only NFL jobs Riley would leave for are the Dallas Cowboys and the Browns.

“Lincoln Riley and Baker Mayfield are incredibly close and they were close from day one when Lincoln Riley came aboard,” Aber said of Mayfield’s offensive coordinator his first two years as the Sooners' starter and his head coach his last season. "That bond just continued to build and build and build over their time together at Oklahoma. I think certainly there is some intrigue for Lincoln Riley as to whether what he does at Oklahoma and what he did with Baker Mayfield would work at the NFL level.

“Right now, I would say the money is slightly on Lincoln Riley staying, but this opportunity is probably not going to come around again to coach a guy that you coached for as long as he coached Baker Mayfield, so I think it’s going to be a really strong draw for him.”

Wide net. All the candidates you’ve heard about, and more than a few you haven’t.

Just not Williams, the guy right in front of you. The Browns set themselves up for more than that. There won’t be one candidate I’ll pound the table for. But Dorsey should do the same thing he did with Mayfield at quarterback.

Identify the No. 1 choice, forget what the rest of the league thinks, and go get him.