Childress' Role as an Observer During the Browns' 2011 Training Camp

New Browns offensive coordinator Brad Childress might have spent a year away from football in terms of being a coach, but as ClevelandBrowns.com's Senior Editor Vic Carucci notes, he took an interest in the team's training camp last year while he was an analyst for SiriusXM Radio:

Childress visited the Browns’ training camp as part of the satellite station’s training-camp tour and joined me as a guest on Cleveland Browns Daily. During our conversation, he mentioned that while visiting the Browns he had discussed the chance to be an observer, rather than a participant, at a camp with team president Mike Holmgren. At the time, Childress saw being "able to see how somebody else does it for the first time in 33 years" as highly valuable even at this stage of his career.

Some of Childress’ visit was reviewing videotape with Browns coach Pat Shurmur, with whom he had worked on the Philadelphia Eagles’ coaching staff. Childress was the Eagles’ offensive coordinator and Shurmur was their quarterbacks coach. Although they shared the same vision for the West Coast offense (an obvious factor in the Browns’ decision to hire Childress), Childress approached the session with the expectation that he would learn something new.

The Childress-to-Cleveland rumors have been around for awhile, and something like this makes it seem like the interest was certainly there a year ago. Having good chemistry is always a key factor for a gameplan coming together, and with the history these two have, it sounds like they'll be able to co-exist just fine (i.e. I can't see a conflict of "who gets to call the plays?" arising between the two).