As all Browns fans awake this Sunday morning basking in the glow that is the Ravens failure, we are interrupted by the news that the Browns have hired Vikings OC Kevin Stefanski to be the next Browns head coach. Before I discuss the hire, let me assure all Titan fans who are reading this, we Browns fans appreciate what your team did. The worst ending for this nightmare of this season would have been a Ravens Super Bowl win. Now we get back to hoping for a great match up in the Super Bowl and bitching on twitter that the Browns hired the wrong guy. Personally, Stefanski was my second choice, I wanted Josh McDaniels and his head coach experience. But for me this is a wait and see approach. I want to see who they hire as a GM (probably Andrew Berry) and who Stefanski hires as his offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator. Rumors have been flying around that Gary Kubiak or Pat Shurmer will be his OC. I think Kubiak stays with the Vikings and becomes their OC and have no idea what Shurmer would do, but would gladly take (NEED) an OC with head coaching experience. As for the defense, I’ve seen no names associated with Stefanski for DC hires. Maybe Wade Phillips or Jim Schwartz.
Lets look at the positives. The Vikings finished eighth in the NFL in offense and sixth in rushing offense. The Vikes had the eighth highest success rate in red zone scoring. They use the same zone rushing scheme as Kyle and Mike Shanahan. If you watched the 49er/ Vikings game on Saturday, just imagine Chubb and Hunt in that scheme. As for Andrew Berry, he was with the Browns front office prior to John Dorsey, so guys like Higgins and Schobert were picked by that front office and there’s is a better chance they will be resigned. I’m not going to get all negative about this hire, I’ll wait till it plays out. Jarvis Landry is apparently not happy, he deleted all photos from his twitter account except one, which shows him in his car and it says “I gave you 11 days… Na it’s my turn.” Let’s hope Landry comes around, you don’t need a team leader mad at you. Let’s see which players show up for the news conference. Besides that, you have to give Jimmy Haslam credit on one thing, he actually let the entire process play out and didn’t go with a knee jerk reaction, like with Hugh Jackson or a blind recommendation, like with Kitchens. The key is, if this teams structure is truly lined up in a winning fashion, we’ll start to see it as the off season progresses. Assistant coaching hires will go a long way in helping to determine the structure. I hope they retain special teams coach Mike Priefer, because right now other teams are lining up to try and hire him. Special teams was the only part of the Browns that actually improved.
So it’s going to be a marriage of Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Berry. In the end, it sounds like Josh McDaniels demanded too much change and Jimmy couldn’t handle that structure. Maybe McDaniels would have stripped down the roster and gone total rebuild? No thank you, enough rebuilds. So, as Browns fans we’ll spend the next few days complaining on twitter that our hillbilly owner screwed us again. No, hiring Brian Daboll would have been screwing us over. I’ll give this a chance and wait and see. I’m really interested in watching the press conference to see what the new Browns head coach and GM have to say. It looks like Kevin Stefanski values putting the right players into the right position, not calling plays and hoping the players execute the play. So he’s the anti Freddie. Lets see if our new GM can acquire the additional talent to do this, that will determine the Browns success moving forward, as well as game day success. I’m a little cynical right now, but we’ll see. Go Browns.