Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, despite numerous injuries to key players, and having to work with four different quarterbacks during the season, has his team in position to potentially reach the postseason for the second time in his four years as coach. (AP Photo)
COPYRIGHT 2023 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
If we were to be so presumptuous to even raise the subject of a Cleveland Browns coaching Mount Rushmore, we would first have to wait for the laughter to subside.
Then most of us would point to Paul Brown, and knock off for lunch.
This is, after all, a franchise that from 1999-2019 employed 11 head coaches (counting interims) in 21 years. That included back-to-back seasons of 1-15 and 0-16.
The Browns’ franchise, which is older than the Super Bowl, has never won the Super Bowl. That’s not a surprise, because the Browns have never played in the Super Bowl.
So when it comes to the matter of a theoretical Cleveland Browns coaching Mount Rushmore, it is not a crowded field. There’s Paul Brown, Blanton Collier, and Marty Schottenheimer. That’s it.
Paul Brown, who virtually invented pro football, or at least the modern version of it, won seven championships in his 17 years coaching the Browns: four in the All-American Football Conference, and three in the NFL (1950, 1954, and 1955). In addition to winning seven league titles in Cleveland, Brown had a winning percentage of .767 (158-48).
PROMOTED
Following the 1962 season owner Art Modell fired Brown and promoted Collier, the team’s backfield coach, to head coach. In his eight years on the job, Collier had a winning percentage of .690 (76-34), took the Browns to the playoffs five times, including 1964, when – this was pre-Super Bowl – Cleveland won the NFL championship by beating Johnny Unitas and the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts 27-0.
Schottenheimer coached the Browns from 1984-88 and had a winning percentage of .620 (71-44), reaching the playoffs in four of the five years, including back-to-back heart-breaking losses to Denver in the AFC championship games in 1986-87.
Then the coaching drought began. It lasted until January of 2020, when the Browns hired Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, whom they had interviewed the year before, but bypassed him, in favor of Freddie Kitchens, who became a one-and-done coach.
So the Browns interviewed Stefanski again the following year. This time they hired him, and they’re glad they did. Stefanski this year should be a strong candidate for NFL Coach of the Year. If he wins it, he would be the NFL’s Coach of the Year twice in his first four years as the Browns’ coach. He won the award as a rookie head coach in 2020, when he led the Browns to an 11-5 record and their first trip to the postseason in 18 years.
