Browns coach Kevin Stefanski to relinquish play-calling duties for a second straight season
The Cleveland Browns have made another change in an effort to fix their broken offense.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski will relinquish offensive play-calling duties for a second consecutive season. He announced the decision Monday. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees will take over, starting with Sunday's game against the New York Jets.
"He's more than capable," Stefanski told reporters of Rees. "Bottom line, we have to get better collectively. ...
"It's never about one person. Whether you're talking about a player or a coach, it's not about one person. ... Bottom line is he understands what we need to do, which is stay on the field and score some points."
The Browns make the move amid a 2-6 start in which they're in last place in the AFC North. Through nine weeks of the NFL season, the Browns rank 31st in total offense, 31st in passing offense and 29th in rushing offense. They rank 30th in scoring with 15.8 points per game.
The midseason move is the latest attempt to fix Cleveland's offensive woes.
QB change hasn't helped
The Browns started the season with veteran Joe Flacco at quarterback. They got off to a 1-3 start with Flacco and benched him in favor of rookie Dillon Gabriel. They ultimately traded Flacco to the AFC North rival Cincinnati Bengals.
Cleveland's offense has not progressed since the quarterback switch. The Browns are 1-3 with Gabriel at quarterback. They scored 31 points in a win over a now 2-7 Dolphins team, but have otherwise scored 17, 9 and 13 points in losses to the Vikings, Steelers and Patriots with Gabriel.
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Flacco, meanwhile, has thrived with Bengals. In his four games with the Browns, Flacco completed 58.1% of his passes for 203.8 yards per game with two touchdowns and six interceptions.
In as many games with the Bengals, Flacco's completed 64.7% of his passes for 313.5 yards per game with 11 touchdowns and two interceptions. His quarterback rating has spiked from 60.3 with the Browns to 102.6 with the Bengals.
Stefanski asked about Flacco's success in Cincinnati
Stefanski was asked about Flacco's relative success in Cincinnati compared to his performance with the Browns.
“I don’t really have a comment on Joe or any players on other teams," Stefanski said. " I don't think it's appropriate."
Gabriel, meanwhile, has struggled, and Cleveland's pass production has regressed. The third-round pick out of Oregon is completing 59.9% of his passes for 117 yards per game with five touchdowns and two interceptions.
Stefanksi reiterated Monday that Gabriel will continue to start over fellow rookie Shedeur Sanders.
More misery in Cleveland since Deshaun Watson deal
Stefanski is in his his sixth year as Cleveland's head coach and is on track to post his fourth losing record in his tenure. He gave up play-calling duties last season to then-offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey following a 1-6 start with Deshaun Watson at quarterback after Watson suffered a season-ending Achilles tear.
The Browns fired Dorsey after the 2024 season and promoted Rees to offensive coordinator from his position as tight ends coach and passing game specialist.
Watson, meanwhile, regressed after joining the Browns on a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract from the Houston Texans ahead of the 2022 season. He's since been sidelined by multiple injuries and remains on the physically unable to perform list.
The Browns were hoping when they acquired him that Watson was the final piece on a talented roster to raise them to championship contention. Outside of an 11-6 campaign in 2023, the Browns have instead remained one of the worst teams in football.
Box-score merchant cooks himself with bad J.J. McCarthy Vikings take
In his first action with the Minnesota Vikings since Week 2, second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy didn't exactly light up the stat sheet in the team's win over the Detroit Lions this past week, as he only threw for 143 yards to go along with two touchdown passes and one interception in addition to another score with his legs.
Despite McCarthy not looking like the second-coming of Peyton Manning in his third-career NFL start, the young Vikings quarterback came up with multiple clutch plays when his team needed him the most against the Lions, including a victory-clinching throw to Jalen Nailor in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.
That and some of the other plays McCarthy made in Detroit, apparently, weren't good enough for Yahoo Sports' Charles McDonald, who made it very obvious that he only glanced at the box score before sharing his evaluation of McCarthy's Week 9 performance on a recent episode of the "Football 301 with Nate Tice" podcast.
"[McCarthy] was bad today. Like he was really, really bad today.
And I feel like I'm having an issue where I don't understand where the disconnect is on what I'm watching and what's actually happening out there.
I feel like people don't understand how low they've lowered the bar for a guy that was traded up for in the first round last year.
And people are like, 'Oh, you know, what, you're done with Jayden McCarthy already?' He'd have to start for me to be done with him.
We haven't even gotten anywhere yet. This has functionally been zero production for the first three games of his career.
...So I don't really understand why we have to sit here and say he's playing well, or it looks promising because it doesn't right now at all. And I think that you should just be able to call a spade a spade.
48 passing yards over three quarters, I mean, that's nothing. If that was any other quarterback, we'd be laughing about how bad that was. But here, for some reason, we got to treat it with kid gloves and I don't quite understand why.
Viking fans should be wanting better quarterback play than this. But you got to pretend that this little production over this many games at this point is workable. No, not yet. He's got a lot to show before [it's] even functional, man."
Lazy take on how Minnesota Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy played in Week 9 misses the mark
Absolutely no one is making the claim that McCarthy is undeserving of criticism, but McDonald's take that the Minnesota quarterback was "really, really bad" in Week 9 is incredibly hilarious.
His take makes it seem like he just looked at the box score before recording the podcast, saw 143 passing yards next to McCarthy's name, and assumed his low yardage amount was due to a poor performance.
Anyone who watched the game closely this past Sunday, knows this take isn't even close to being true.
McCarthy had several impressive throws and moments throughout the game against the Lions, and he accounted for all three of Minnesota's touchdowns in the contest (two passing, one rushing). If he wasn't starting under center, the Vikings likely wouldn't have come away with a win over Detroit in Week 9.
Sure, McCarthy made plenty of mistakes in the game as well, and that's expected for someone making their third-career start in the NFL. But attempting to make the claim that his performance was really, really bad is just plain foolish.
