Dawgs By Nature
Taking a look at where PFSN ranks Stefanski as a play caller among his coaching peers.
Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski has been through a lot during his five seasons in charge of the team.
His first year was conducted during COVID and ended with a playoff berth and postseason win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. A second playoff appearance came in 2023 in a season where the Browns started five quarterbacks. He is the first head coach to have two seasons of double-digit wins with the franchise since Marty Schottenheimer. A pair of Coach of the Year honors are currently sitting on his trophy shelf.
Related: Kevin Stefanski’s spot in PFF’s 2025 returning HC rankings
Stefanski has accomplished all that while also taking on the role of offensive player caller, outside of a short, disastrous stint in 2024 with Ken Dorsey. While he has his critics, which is just the cost of doing business, watching wide receivers run wide open on a weekly basis shows that Stefanski has a good idea of what he is doing.
How he stacks up to his peers is a question that Pro Football Sports Network sought to answer in its rankings of the league’s offensive play callers. The site took into account “several factors, including reputation, recent performance, current scheme, and trajectory,” with Stefanski landing right in the middle at No. 16:
Kevin Stefanski is still one of the more underrated offensive minds in football, even as the Cleveland Browns’ offense has spiraled over the past few seasons. Quarterback instability and failed experiments have plagued Cleveland over the years. However, Stefanski’s system has at least offered some hope.
The Browns flashed it in 2023, where veteran Joe Flacco enjoyed somewhat of a resurgence. Ahead of the 2024 season, Cleveland brought in Ken Dorsey in an attempt to tailor the scheme to Deshaun Watson, but things didn’t work out, as the Browns finished dead last in Offense+.
Now, the QB room is deep but filled with plenty of question marks. Add in a shaky offensive line and a less-than-stellar receiving corps, and Stefanski faces one of his toughest coaching challenges yet.
That ranking feels a bit low, especially since Stefanski had to deal with what was historically one of the worst quarterback rooms in 2024. There is only so much a play-caller can do when the quarterbacks are tacking sacks, missing receivers, throwing pick-sixes, and generally messing things up on a regular basis.
The situation has been remedied somewhat by the team bringing in a completely new group of quarterbacks for this season, but there are still questions to be answered this summer to see who will emerge from the group of Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders.
The Browns have nowhere to go but up after the mess of last season, and a return to the offensive system that found success in two playoff seasons is a good place to start.
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