CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Kevin Stefanski falls somewhere between a savior and a second choice, which might thread the Browns’ coaching needle. The 10th head coach hired since the Browns returned, Stefanski stands several notches behind Josh McDaniels on the savior perception scale, and it’s easy to understand why Browns fans often feel as if they need to be saved.

But they don’t need to be. They just need a coach who’s good at this. And honestly, in 20 years, it doesn’t appear they’ve had that.

There isn’t a Bill Belichick in the era of the new Browns, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe the Browns just ruined careers, but among the first nine coaches to try and fail in Cleveland, none did anything of note as head coaches after leaving. Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator in Cleveland who shouldn’t have gotten away, but he was never a boss here. And the Browns have hired plenty of coordinators who previously proved their skill in running one side of the ball.

But none of them were head coaches. There wasn’t a right guy in the wrong place -- just wrong guys. Congrats. The Browns are terrible at hiring.

They’ve failed in a variety of ways, but none that exactly fit the model that led them to this 37-year-old Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator. Learning from the past for the Browns means doing nothing reminiscent of what happened before, because what happened before never worked.

So that’s the rationale behind Stefanski hope. This is (kind of) unlike the past nine misses.

I’d say there were three previous saviors:

College coach Butch Davis, plucked from Miami off the Jimmy Johnson tree and given too much power;

Eric Mangini, viewed as a quick fix gift and hired a little more than a week after he was fired by the Jets;

and Hue Jackson, the hottest assistant on the market, who was viewed as the leading candidate in San Francisco before the Browns landed him and clapped him into the building.

Stefanski isn’t that.

There were three previous second choices:

Chris Palmer, handed the expansion franchise after Brian Billick dropped out and took the Ravens job;

Rob Chudzinski, picked in the scramble after Chip Kelly said no and eventually went to Philadelphia;

and Mike Pettine, who threatened to back out and forced the hand of the Browns, who hired him without waiting for Seattle defensive coordinator Dan Quinn to get done with the Super Bowl.

This search didn’t lead to that.

Stefanski is the favored choice of a voice in the building, which more closely matches the three other previous hires: Romeo Crennel, who wowed everyone after his interview as the brain trust coalesced around his selection; Pat Shurmur, who was a branch off Mike Holmgren’s coaching tree, by way of Andy Reid, as the Browns tried to streamline their way of thinking; and Freddie Kitchens, picked by John Dorsey when the GM was given the power to make the choice and stayed in-house.

Stefanski fits this as the choice of chief strategist Paul DePodesta, whose influence was made clear by this selection. So Crennel went 24-40 in four seasons; Shurmur went 9-23 in two seasons; and Kitchens went 6-10 in one season. Why should this style of hire inspire confidence?

Maybe because Minnesota, where Stefanski has coached for all 14 of his NFL seasons, isn’t that good.

Crennel came from New England, where as defensive coordinator he helped the Patriots win three Super Bowls in four years. Who would argue against a coordinator with that resume? Yet Crennel averaged six wins a season in Cleveland, and given a second chance in Kansas City, went 2-14 and was fired. Crennel was an influential part of the most successful team in the league, but he wasn’t a success as a head coach.

Shurmur came from St. Louis, where he was the offensive coordinator for two seasons, but he’d built his career with a decade in Philadelphia under Reid, where Shurmur was part of five NFC Championship Games. He learned the NFL as part of a consistently winning team … but he won nine games in two years in Cleveland, and given another chance, went 9-23 in two seasons as head coach of the New York Giants and was fired again. He was steeped in winning, but he didn’t win as a head coach.

Honestly, Stefanski is closest among Browns hires to Kitchens. The Browns interviewed Stefanski last season when he had just three games running an offense after replacing a fired offensive coordinator. At least Kitchens had an eight-game trial in the same situation. This year, Stefanski had a whole season running a playoff offense, but DePodesta was enamored a year ago.

Stefanski is Ivy League Freddie, which isn’t necessarily a criticism. Because success isn’t all about bio. The pedigree part of this plan has already been overplayed. DePodesta and possible new GM Andrew Berry went to Harvard, while Stefanski went to Penn. But let’s not base NFL hires on where 18-year-olds were accepted to college. You know what Kitchens would have told an Ivy League school out of high school? No thanks, I’m going to play quarterback at Alabama. There’s a smart argument to be made that resume can be overrated in hires like this, and that’s a reason taking McDaniels, the 12-year offensive coordinator in New England, would have assumed some risk. Were you hiring the Tom Brady-Belichick success, or the right guy?

What you’ve done matters, but not as much as who you are.

Look for reassurance about Stefanski in three places. One is our own ignorance. Immediate evaluations of coaching hires are awful. We don’t know what we don’t know. The Browns have hired more qualified coaches in the past that fans were more enthused about, and that didn’t work. So this might. Once Ron Rivera jumped right from Carolina to Washington, there wasn’t a sure thing in this coaching offseason. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Two is DePodesta’s Cleveland history. He and the Sashi Brown regime reportedly wanted Sean McDermott over Jackson in 2016, and McDermott has succeeded in Buffalo. DePodesta wanted Stefanski over Kitchens last season. It’s faith in DePodesta this time instead of faith in Dorsey.

However, it’s always easier to be against something than for something. DePodesta’s history has been looking smart when ownership didn’t listen. Now the Haslams did listen, so it’s not that the other guy was wrong. It’s that you have to be right.

The third reason is Kirk Cousins. Stefanski called an offense in Minnesota that ranked sixth in points per drive (the Browns were 20th) with talent that Cleveland can match. He utilized two tight ends a lot, a formation in which Baker Mayfield has found success. I’ll take Mayfield over Cousins, and the rest of the skill is similar.

I hope Browns fans are watching Kevin Stefanski & the Vikes. He'd be fun here.



Dalvin Cook = Kareem Hunt

Stefon Diggs = Odell Beckham

Adam Thielen = Jarvis Landry



Chubb = Gravy on top



Browns need a TE & Oline upgrades but the foundation is there for a smooth transition. — Ellis L. Williams (@BookofEllis) January 5, 2020

If the Browns had hired San Francisco defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, I would have wondered how much of his success was about Nick Bosa and Richard Sherman. If they had hired Baltimore offensive coordinator Greg Roman, I would have wondered how much of his success was Lamar Jackson. If they had hired McDaniels, same with Brady. If they had hired Buffalo offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, I would have wondered why he bounced through six jobs in the last decade.

From the outside, maybe I’d have preferred two other interviewees -- Kansas City offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy or Philadelphia defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.

As everyone said from the start, one requirement here is getting the entire Browns organization on the same page. With DePodesta, Stefanski and the GM to-be-hired, it seems like they’ve done that.

But the other must is hiring the right guy as the head coach. How do you ever know if you’ve done that? The Browns have expertise in how to not do that.

Of course Stefanski has to lead. Of course the Browns need more patience. At the moment, you can find outrage that DePodesta rigged the process and was hiring Stefanski from the start, and outrage that the Browns dawdled, were the last team to make a hire and conducted another clueless search. That’s a full range of opposing outrage. I think the process was fine and didn’t cost them anyone they wanted. As for the outcome, it’s just a different kind of risk.

McDaniels would have made more people happy today, but that’s not the point. Stefanski’s play-calling acumen and quarterback developing got him the job, but that’s not really the point, either. Stefanski won’t save the Browns. Maybe he’ll be right enough.

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