Kevin Stefanski's planned family move to Cleveland was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic, and he's been working remotely from Minnesota as the Browns' offseason heats up. (TLOD.com)
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
Takeaways from Kevin Stefanski’s conference call …
1.Three days before the scheduled opening of his first Browns’ offseason conditioning program and 20 days before his first Browns’ draft, head coach Kevin Stefanski remains in Edina, MN, with his wife and three children – home-bound like most everyone else as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
His plans to move everyone to Cleveland was paused when the world changed. Stefanski has been working remotely from home for two weeks, conducting meetings with his coaching staff via Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and doing the same with GM Andrew Berry and his staff.
“I just felt like I could work remotely from here as opposed to being away from my family or bringing them to Cleveland,” Stefanski said. “If you are going to be quarantined, it made more sense to be in a place they knew and are used to this house and I just think it was important to be somewhere I could get a lot of work done still. I am like everybody else. I wake up every day, read the news and ask the questions, ‘When do you think we are going to get going here? When do you think we are going to load the car up?’ and all of those types of things. [It’s] very fluid from that perspective for us as a family.”
2.In a perfect world, Stefanski would be multi-tasking at a critical early juncture of his first season as coach. He would be getting his newly-built staff up to speed with his offense and coordinator Joe Woods’ defense. He would be greeting his full team as a whole for the first time on Monday. And he would be meeting draft prospects on visits to the team facility.
Now he is waiting for NFL instructions on how to conduct virtual classroom sessions with his players. He has not participated in any Zoom conferences with draft prospects. And it is looking very much like Stefanski will be working the draft remotely from his home.
“I would say anything is possible, yes,” he said. “Obviously, [it is] a unique situation. I want to get to Cleveland ASAP, but I will heed the advice of the professionals on this one.”
3.The NFL originally set guidelines for teams to conduct drafts away from their facilities in small off-site gatherings of no more than 10 people together, six feet apart. But it may step back from that and require all teams to work the draft remotely from personal residences to comply with individual states’ guidelines and to keep every team on the same playing field. So, every coach will be in the same situation as Stefanski. More clarity will come as the draft approaches.
4.Even though the Browns are embarking on another new regime, with GM Andrew Berry conducting his first draft and Stefanski being a new coach, the Browns are positioned as well as any team to handle an all-remote draft.
“Luckily, we are pretty tech savvy,” Stefanski said. “Virtually, it is amazing what you can get done remotely. In my conversations with Paul [DePodesta, chief strategy officer] and my conversations with Andrew over the last few weeks, we have not slowed down. Ideally, we are all together in the same room. We will see what is realistic and what is not when the league decides what they want to do. If it ends up being remote, I have no doubt that we can get everything done that we have set out to get done.”
5.Stefanski is aware, of course, that everybody’s life has been altered. He does not feel that he, as a first-year coach trying to implement new schemes to players he hasn’t even addressed in person as a full team, is at a disadvantage in trying to prepare for a season of uncertainty.
“You just have to make it work,” he said. “I do not look at it from any other perspective than that. I think all 32 teams are at the same disadvantage, and that is the truth. Everyone is dealing with it. For us, our big thing is just day by day, it is a very fluid situation, as we all know. We are just awaiting word from the league on how they are going to handle certain things, and we will adapt and adjust accordingly.”
6.There’s so much going on, it’s possible that Stefanski will not even have video meetings prior to the draft with the Browns’ potential first-round draft picks. “I have not personally [yet],” he said. “I know our position coaches have been doing that. I sat in on all of the [prospect interviews] in Indianapolis. I know there are certain rules related to how long you can talk to these guys and I know we are adhering to them, but I would say the scouts and our position coaches are doing the bulk of those calls right now.”