Tag: AP Coach of the Year

Kevin Stefanski of Browns earns AP Coach of the Year honors

Kevin Stefanski of Browns wins AP Coach of the Year

The Cleveland Browns came away with three awards at NFL Honors on Thursday.

The AP Defensive Player of the Year went to Myles Garrett. The star defensive lineman’s head coach, Kevin Stefanski, earned AP Coach of the Year. Joe Flacco was named Comeback Player of the Year.

Stefanski led the Browns to an 11-6 record after a 7-10 campaign in 2023.

He did so despite having to go through a series of quarterbacks, finally winding up with Joe Flacco, who ignited the Cleveland offense.

Stefanski is 37-30 in four seasons with Cleveland.

Kevin O’Connell finishes 6th in AP Coach of the Year voting

O’Connell should have finished higher than sixth

When Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell was left out of the finalists for AP NFL Coach of the Year, it was very disappointing. He led the Vikings to a 13-4 record and the franchise’s first division title since 2017.

On Thursday, the award was given to New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll. The full voting results were released and O’Connell finished in sixth place.

The voting was different this year in that you gave your top three. O’Connell got one first-place vote, four second-place votes, and six third-place votes. He ended up on 11 of the 50 ballots.

Overall, it was a very solid showing for the first-year head coach O’Connell. This was a very difficult award to win, as there were many great candidates.

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Kevin O’Connell not named finalist for AP Coach of the Year

Winning 13 games wasn’t enough for the voters

The National Football League honors the best of the 2022 season at NFL Honors on Thursday, February 9th. Justin Jefferson was named a finalist for AP Offensive Player of the Year but Kevin O’Connell wasn’t so lucky. The finalists for AP Coach of the Year came out and he was not named a finalist.

This comes as somewhat of a surprise considering the Minnesota Vikings exceeded expectations by winning 13 games when their win total was set at nine games before the season started. Yes, the Vikings didn’t finish the season great with a loss to the New York Giants in the wild-card round but all the voting takes place before the playoffs begin.

The five finalists are New York Giants’ Brian Daboll, Philadelphia Eagles’ Nick Sirianni, San Francisco 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, Jacksonville Jaguars’ Doug Pederson and Buffalo Bills’ Sean McDermott.

Former OKC assistant, Anthony Grant, named AP Coach of the Year

Grant led the Dayton Flyers to a 29-2 overall record and a final ranking of No. 3 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Former Oklahoma City Thunder assistant coach, Anthony Grant, was named the Associated Press Coach of the Year earlier this week.

Grant led the University of Dayton to a 29-2 overall record, an Atlantic-10 regular-season championship, and a final ranking of No. 3 in the Associated Press Top 25, matching the program’s highest finish from 1956.

The Flyers earned the top seed in the A-10 conference tournament and were in line for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament before both were canceled due to concerns stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Grant returned to his alma mater, where he played from 1983-87, in 2017 after spending two seasons in Oklahoma City on Billy Donovan’s staff.

His stint with the Thunder marked the fourth time that Grant had worked under Donovan, dating back to the mid-1990s at Marshall University.

Prior to coming on as an assistant in OKC in 2015, Grant served as an assistant under Donovan for 10 years at the University of Florida, where he helped lead the Gators to their first national championship in 2006. The program won its second title in 2007 with players that Grant had recruited prior to taking the head coaching job at Virginia Commonwealth University.