Steve Wilks has been fired twice in the last two years, but he’ll avoid the same fate after the 2020 season comes to an end.
Wilks was fired after one year as the Cardinals head coach in 2018 and lost his job as the Browns defensive coordinator after Cleveland decided Freddie Kitchens would also be one-and-done as a head coach. He spoke with former Panthers boss Ron Rivera about a job in Washington and also communicated with the Jets, but Wilks is still being paid by Arizona and he’ll be taking the year off before trying to get back into the league.
“When you go through two years like I did, you want to make sure that the next [job] is gonna have some longevity. You don’t want to go into a situation where there may be some speculation there, and all of a sudden you find yourself [and] it’s three years in a row,” Wilks said, via Joseph Person of TheAthletic.com. “Just really the thing about this league, there’s not really a lot of patience anymore. You’ve got to win now. I definitely want to get back into it as quickly as possible.”
Wilks, who remains in Cleveland with his family, plans to spend the year watching film and visiting teams during camp in order to keep up with the game ahead of what he hopes will be the start of a more successful run in 2021.