New York Giants senior offensive assistant Freddie Kitchens watches before an NFL preseason football game, Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021, in Cleveland, Ohio. [Jeff Lange/Beacon Journal] Freddie
NCAABy Sean Keeley on

Freddie Kitchens’ very brief stint as a head coach in the NFL didn’t go well, but perhaps a change of scenery to college football will do the trick.

Kitchens was announced as the new senior football analyst for the South Carolina Gamecocks on Wednesday.

The move makes sense as Kitchens and South Carolina head coach Shame Beamer are old friends, having worked together at Mississippi State in 2004 and 2005. That also happened to be the last time Kitchens coached in college football before moving to the NFL.

Kitchens, who played quarterback for Alabama in the 1990s, has bounced all over in his coaching career. When he was hired by the Cleveland Browns as running back coach in 2018, he couldn’t have known that the team would fire then-head coach Hue Jackson, which led to him being elevated to offensive coordinator, which then led to his promotion to head coach in the following year. However, a 6-10 finish wasn’t good enough for him to keep his job beyond that one season.

He resurfaced with the New York Giants, once again working his way up the ladder when someone was fired. After initially coming on as a tight-end coach, he eventually became interim offensive coordinator when Jason Garrett was fired. However, when head coach Joe Judge was fired last year, Kitchens went with him.

While it could be seen as a step down for the coach, he’ll also get the chance to work with quarterback Spencer Rattler and potentially remake himself in the college coaching world. While we wait to see what kind of impact he might have, his hiring certainly caused a lot of interesting reactions in the football world.

[South Carolina]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.

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