Kevin Stefanski expressed full confidence in Baker Mayfield as his starting quarterback and in himself as the offensive play-caller. So how does he fix the offense? (TheLandOnDemand)
Kevin Stefanski’s stated plan to fix the offense is based too much on hope, and deep down he's got to know that
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
INDIANAPOLIS
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
Agreed.
That might have been the proper Browns’ strategy on offense after the 2020 playoff season. So they stayed pat.
But when it comes to the Browns’ offense in 2021, everyone knows that it was broken.
Odell Beckham Jr. went rogue, stirred up the locker room, talked his way off the team and onto a Super Bowl championship team, on which he regained his previous form and rightfully earned a ring.
Jarvis Landry had career-lows in major categories, partly due to recurring injuries, and boycotted media appearances rather than speak negatively about the offense.
Baker Mayfield had his worst season, also partly due to injuries, and seemingly lost the confidence of his teammates.
Rashard Higgins disappeared as Mayfield’s secret weapon.
The tight ends generally underperformed.
Kevin Stefanski’s game management and play-calling in critical situations was awful.
What does it say about the state of things when the best, clutch offensive drive of the year with a game on the line was led by emergency quarterback Nick Mullens and play-called by coordinator Alex Van Pelt while Mayfield and Stefanski watched from home in COVID quarantine?
Yes, the offense was terribly broken in 2021.
Yet in his dual appearances in the NFL Combine media room – at the podium in front of national media, and then in a sidebar session exclusively with Northeast Ohio media – Stefanski came off as a cross between the captain of the Titanic and Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi propagandist of 2003.
No worries, everything’s fine
Stefanski echoed the company line stated previously by GM Andrew Berry that Mayfield will return virtually unchallenged as starting quarterback in 2022.
The coach denied he reassigned tight ends coach Drew Petzing to quarterbacks coach as a means to improving Mayfield’s flagging mechanics or to free up Van Pelt, who doubled as the QB coach for two seasons, to relieve Stefanski as the primary play-caller on gamedays.
He said reassigning Petzing was to broaden his growth as a coach, and also that of T.C. McCarthy, who was promoted from general offensive assistant to tight ends coach. As for Van Pelt, he will continue to oversee offensive meetings as coordinator and have a huge voice in game-planning, but will not call plays.
“I will still call the plays,” Stefanski reiterated. “Like I have told you guys many, many times, AVP is a huge, huge part of what we do throughout the week and on gameday. We have ideas of how we can do that better. That is something that we have really spent time on, making sure we have everybody’s voice and everybody has a way on gameday to contribute, if you will, and AVP is a huge part of that.”
Stefanski flatly disputed that Mayfield has gone “unchallenged” even though noodle-armed veteran Case Keenum has been the only primary backup for two years and was not seriously considered as a suitable replacement during Mayfield’s litany of injuries in 2021.
I asked Stefanski, “Wouldn’t Mayfield benefit from being challenged?”
“I would push back a little bit that he is not challenged,” Stefanski responded.
“I think every day those guys understand that it is a challenge. In terms of the [QB] room and those type of things, I am not going to get into that necessarily, but I think Baker and all of our players understand that it is a competition and you are getting challenged every single day. They treat every day like a challenge. I am comfortable with how that goes, but how the rest of the offseason goes, we will see.”
That final phrase – “how the rest of the offseason goes, we will see” – cracks open the door to the real possibility of the Browns bringing in someone more capable than Keenum to, if nothing else, incite Mayfield to rise to a challenge.
He did it in college, so why not in the NFL? Unless they are worried that his head would explode at the sight of a younger veteran invading his turf.
Where’s the fix?
Another issue being swept under the rug by Stefanski is the real appearance of locker room unrest.
No doubt Beckham’s hasty exodus rattled the locker room. It never quite returned to Kumbaya status as Mayfield’s performance worsened – for whatever reason, injury or otherwise. Mayfield spoke on two different national pre-game shows of having to repair relationships in the locker room, something he never encountered before in his career.
I asked Stefanski if he detected any “locker room problem” after conducting exit interviews with his players.
After a slight pause, he answered, “No. I think we had a disappointing season. A lot of times, as you guys know, winning is a deodorant. Then all of the sudden you lose, and you want to naturally think everything is broken. That is not the case. I think we were disappointed in how that season ended, and I think now we have to make sure that we are doing our part to put a team together, to come together as a team when we finally do get together and set our sights on 2022.”
So how does Stefanski intend to fix the passing game?
“We were just too inconsistent,” he said. “There were times we just had to do a little bit of a better job at every spot – coaching, playing and you name it. We have to nail down the details of our system, give our guys the best chance to succeed and then ultimately make a couple more plays a game, is what it comes down to.”
In other words, add a couple receivers and hope Mayfield returns to form.
If that’s the extent of Stefanski’s intentions, it’s not a good plan.
But guess what? I think he knows that. He just doesn’t want to reveal it.
