Has Deshaun Watson’s arrival protected Kevin Stefanski from being fired?

Kevin Stefanski may have been given another year as Cleveland Browns’ head coach thanks to Deshaun Watson.

Never underestimate how much a quarterback likes your head coach. If there’s a strong bond there, no matter how turmoil the team may be going through, that head coach is likely safe. Is it fair? No, but the NFL overly caters to quarterbacks and so if a quarterback wants something and they’re locked in enough, they’ll likely get it. So for those hoping that Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski gets the ax, sadly you’re likely to not get it and that’s because Deshaun Watson likes him.

Watson, who missed 11 games in 2022 due to his sexual assault suspension, has made it clear that he likes Stefanski, to such a degree that Watson picked the Browns in part due to Stefanski. Allegedly. The $240 million dollar contract, fully guaranteed was the deciding factor, but it’s nice to hear an All-Pro caliber quarterback embrace his coach to such a degree.

Stefanski has had an uneven year as a head coach. While at one point his Browns were near the top (or at the top) of the league in offensive scoring, that didn’t last long. The Browns’ offense has been less “Greatest Show on Turf” and more “excelling despite bad decision-making”.

See, Stefanski seemingly is the kind of guy who thinks he’s smarter than the room, and will often out-coach himself. Does your team have fourth and inches, with arguably the league’s best short-yardage quarterback under center? Do you do a QB sneak to get the first down?

No? Throw it 30 yards you say? Well, you must have gone to the school of Stefanski. In other offenses these types of plays aren’t the backbreaker they are with the Browns. The Browns rank just 16th in yards per play, 16th in drives that end in scoring, and 16th in expected points scored.

They are average as heck. So when a drive doesn’t go perfectly, they don’t get anything. They don’t have the big play capabilities that other teams do. In a lot of ways, they’re like the NFL version of the Cleveland Guardians. The Guardians had to win games by stringing together singles to produce runs, as they didn’t have much home run-hitting power in their lineup. The same is true for the Browns, who are surviving by stringing small plays together. They rarely achieve negative yardage but they also aren’t gobbling up such big amounts on first down, usually, that they can afford to take dramatic chances like Stefanski sometimes like to do.

There is no next level to this offense, so if they pooch an easy conversion, there may not be enough time left for them to make up the deficit.

The Cleveland Browns need to overhaul the offense in 2023

Stefanski’s offense is very limiting, and it has always been. For three seasons Stefanski has put forth a desire to have an offense that eats yards and time. This works with the lead, it does not when you’re behind. That’s a sign that the offense needs to be worked on. With Watson, you have a much more up-tempo quarterback (hopefully), and you can then move up and down the field more at will. Right now we’re not seeing that. Under Watson, the offense has scored just 12 points in three games.

Is it a timing issue? Does the playcalling suck? Has Watson lost a step? We have no idea, the sample size is too small to definitively say what’s wrong but something is clearly wrong. This is a team with too much money invested in it for it to be this bad.

Watson may have saved Stefanski’s career with the Browns, but for his sake and the team, Stefanski has got to go out of his way this offseason to improve things. Whether that’s abandoning his “Eat Yards, Eat Clock” mantra or whether it’s cutting half of the 24 running backs he insists on keeping on the roster, but never using and instead investing in real talent at receiver.

Watson may seemingly keep Stefanski from getting fired this year, but that doesn’t mean he gets an endless amount of “do-overs”.