Stefanski has the Browns at 8-3 despite a multitude of obstacles in his way
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The Cleveland Browns are 8-3 and heading into December with a great deal hanging on every game. The Browns had a good roster on paper in the 2019 season and things didn’t go as planned, finishing 6-10 and in an ugly fashion. It has been clear for some time that it was going to take some special people to extricate the Browns from what they had become for the last 20 years.
If you were to query a randomly selected group of Browns fans about why the team was so bad and why it continued year in and year out, you would get a multitude of different answers with phrases like “poor culture,” “no continuity,” “lack of discipline,” “bad ownership,” “inadequate leadership” and with “no talent” leading the way.
After some combination of work from general managers Sashi Brown and John Dorsey, we were able to peel off the “no talent” label. Many of us thought this was the answer to our problems, yet the same old phrases remained at the end of the 2019 season.
For the Browns, the 2020 season brought on yet another regime change. Chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta got his way and they hired the 38-year old Kevin Stefanski as head coach, pairing him with the youngest GM in NFL history in Andrew Berry.
2020 also brought what seemed like endless obstacles for the NFL. The Browns were firmly placed behind the eight ball, forced to forge ahead without any real offseason. Let’s not undervalue what an advantage any level of continuity has meant to teams around the NFL this season. The Browns had none.
They devised a plan and Stefanski virtually met his team. His first season as an NFL head coach kicked off completely reliant on communication with staff and players over an endless stream of zoom calls.
Kevin Stefanski should be Coach of the Year in the NFL. How do you change a culture as fast as he has? How do you find a way to reach all your players on a personal level in a normal year let alone 2020? How do you instill the buy-in needed to win in the NFL? How you teach a very youthful football team how to win? I don’t know, but he did it.
You start to see that things have really changed when a guy like WR Rashard Higgins doesn’t dress for multiple weeks at the beginning season. He doesn’t complain and instead stays ready. He gets his opportunity in Week 5 and comes up big with three catches and a touchdown. What would you expect a guy to say about his coach at that point? Not this…
Coach believes in me. I would not be on the team for no reason. He knows what I am capable of, and I do at a high level every time. He kept me on the team for a reason. He believed in me. He trusts in me. The whole staff upstairs, they believe in me. They know what I am capable of. There is nothing to question. I am on the team for a reason. When I am called upon, I have to do my job.”
That’s a big difference from the back and forth between him and Kitchens in 2019.
That sounds like buy-in.
“We all believe in him. Hell of a coach. He knows what he is doing. With a great leader like that, he knows the way. He is showing us the way, and if we do it correctly, we will win games. It is obviously showing. He is doing a hell of a job leading the pack. What a great leader he is for us.”
When the players start sounding like the coach, using the same language and answering questions in the same manner, things are changing. That’s buy-in.
He is the adult in the room they have needed, while still inspiring wholesale belief in him and his staff. Taking an organization that has been in a rut for two decades and making them believe they are different is no small task.
His game planning is organized and sound. His play-calling has been excellent and he is putting his players in a position to be successful.
The Cleveland Browns are 8-3 and they are without their star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., second-round draft pick Grant Delpit, plus an always-expanding list of weekly injuries to deal with. Despite all of it, they never have deterred from their vision. A vision instilled by and shared with their head coach.
Kevin Stefanski needs to be the Coach of the Year in the NFL. I don’t think it is really that close when accounting for everything he has overcome, the most powerful of which being the 20 years of losing that came before him.
