CLEVELAND, Ohio — If Kevin Stefanski is to Baker Mayfield what he was to Kirk Cousins and Case Keenum, he should be back playing like the No. 1 overall pick in no time.

"I spoke to Baker briefly [Monday],’’ Stefanski said Tuesday during his introductory press conference. “He’s down in Austin, Texas, caught up with him for just a minute. He is the trigger man and that is the exciting part for me. I worked with a lot of quarterbacks, a lot of great ones over the years, and I am looking forward to hunkering down with him and getting to work.’’

The good news for Mayfield, who’s going on his third head coach in three seasons, is that Stefanski is meticulously organized and efficient, unlike last year’s scattered approach under Freddie Kitchens. Mayfield lamented several times that the Browns wasted time in OTAs on plays they weren’t going to run, and sources told cleveland.com that dysfunction reigned on offense throughout the season.

“Like any one of our players, when they walk in the building, we’ll have a detailed plan for them about how they’re going to improve,’’ he said. “Baker, as a young player, the sky is the limit, but we’re going to put in the work to get it done with Baker. I am still in the infancy of studying last year and will identify some things as we get going. Certainly, when you’re talking about this job and this franchise and everything that goes with it, you think about the quarterback. I think the sky is the limit for the kid."

Stefanski, who ran Gary Kubiak’s West Coast scheme in Minnesota last year, got career seasons out of both Cousins and Keenum as QB coach and then OC in Minnesota, and also worked with Brett Favre as assistant QB coach in 2009, when Favre went 12-4 and took the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game. Mayfield has often been compared to Favre because of his size, arm strength and gunslinger mentality.

“I think it’s terrific that I can pull from different experiences,’’ Stefanski said. “And I know this, they come in all shapes and sizes. There are different styles. I will just tell you the skillset that our quarterback has is legit. He’s as accurate as they come. There are plenty of things that we’ll do schematically to, hopefully, make life easier on him, and looking forward to the jump that this kid will take.''

In Stefanski’s first year as Minnesota’s full-time coordinator this year, Cousins went 10-6 and climbed to No. 4 in the NFL with a career-best 107.4 rating and No. 4 with a 69.1 completion percentage. He threw 26 touchdowns against only six interceptions.

Last season, Stefanski’s first with Cousins as quarterbacks coach and the interim coordinator the last three games, the QB had career bests in completion percentage (70.1%) and TDs (30), and threw the fewest INTs (10) since becoming a full-time starter in 2015.

Under Stefanski’s tutelage, Cousins became the first QB in NFL history to throw for at least 4,000 yards with at least 30 passing TDs, 10 or fewer INTs and complete at least 70.0% of his passes in a season.

In 2017, Stefanski’s first year as QB coach, he guided Keenum to a 11-3 record and a berth in the NFC Championship game after Sam Bradford went down with a knee injury. Keenum came in with a 9-15 record in 24 career starts, a 58.4% completion mark, a 78.4 passer rating and a TD-INT ratio of 24-20.

Under Stefanski, he improved to a 67.6% completion mark, a 98.3 passer rating and a TD-INT ratio of 22-7. He also recorded eight games with a 100-plus rating to tie for second-most in team history in a season and tied a team record with 10 games on the season without an INT.

“[Mayfield’s] such a young player and the guys I have been around, when they put their mind to it and they start to grind on this thing and understand the whys and the concepts that we are teaching, I really think this kid has a chance to take off.”

Stefanski runs a balanced attack that will feature plenty of play-action and rollouts and bootlegs. He’ll run the ball a lot behind the zone-blocking schemes Kyle Shanahan used here, and he’ll take shots downfield to Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry. He favors a fullback, and will use multiple tight ends. As Stefanski’s mentor, Brad Childress, told cleveland.com, “all of those guys will have a piece of the action. The runners, the quarterbacks, the wide receivers should be able to get plenty. I mean, it’s a tight-end friendly offense as well, so everything from the wide receiver screens to the deep over-the-top throws.’’

It’s a quarterback-friendly scheme in part “because he’s always got an answer, a place to go with the ball in an emergency,’’ said Childress.

That should be music to the ears of Mayfield, who floundered under Kitchens’ guidance last year, tumbling to second-last in the NFL with a 78.8 rating, and second-last with a 59.4 completion percentage. He also finished second in the NFL with 21 interceptions.

But it won’t take Stefanski long to diagnose the problem. According to profootballfocus.com, it stems primarily from Kitchens’ failure to utilize more play action.

Mayfield play-faked 28.7 percent of the time in 2019 for 20th in the NFL, but there was a huge disparity in Mayfield’s statistics in and out of play-action. When using it, he completed 66.5 percent of his passes (105-of-158) with 11 TDs and 6 INTs for a 102.5 rating. With no play action, he completed only 212 of 376 attempts (56.4%) with 11 TDs and a whopping 15 interceptions for a 68.8 rating.

During an interview on Sirius XM NFL Radio on Wednesday, Stefanski noted that Mayfield has several key attributes that will translate to success.

“The No. 1 trait for a quarterback — and this is no secret — is accuracy, and it’s something that you can improve, but you really either have it or you don’t,'' Stefanski said. “There’s a such a natural part of that, a natural aspect of accuracy, and Baker has that.”

In addition, he said he legitimate movement skills, which will be featured in his scheme.

“He makes plays off schedule as good as anybody and that shows me that he can make plays on the move whether we design it or not,'' he said. “So we’re going to design some plays to get him on the move and hopefully get him some big chunk completions. And then there’s going to be other times where he’s going to make a play that has no right of being made.

"I’m going to call a bad play or we’re going to call a bad play and it’s into a bad coverage, and he’s going to scramble and make a play. So that’s the type of thing you can’t teach that he really has when it turns into a fast break.”

What’s more, Stefanski noted that Mayfield has that elusive quality that everyone wants in their QB.

"It’s that ‘it’ factor, and he has it,'' he said. "He’s won at every level he’s been playing at. It’s how you carry yourself. It’s how you are as a teammate. Do you make the guys around you better? And I think Baker checks all those boxes.”

Stefanski vowed to cleveland.com that Mayfield will improve.

"At the end of the day, I promise you, we’ll get him in the building and we’ll start to get to work and then I think we’ll like the fruits of our labor,'' he said.

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