Leading OFF
Stefanski seeks Hall off Fame help to follow playoff success
While general manager Andrew Berry was upgrading the Browns defense during the off-season, coach Kevin Stefanski found time to take a more esoteric approach.
Behind closed doors, Stefanski spoke to Hall of Fame coaches Bill Cowher and Tony Dungy on how to foster team chemistry and change the culture. During those talks, Cowher said the most important question Stefanski asked was how to handle success.
In 2020, the Browns went 11-5 in the regular season, reached the playoffs for the first time since 2002, and won their first playoff game since Jan. 1, 1995. In his first season as a head coach at any level, Stefanski overcame a lack of spring and summer on-field work, a shortened training camp and the cancellation of the preseason due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He was forced to watch the 48-37 wild-card victory in Pittsburgh from his basement after he contracted the virus.
Under Stefanski, the Browns reached new heights in the expansion era before falling 22-17 to the Kansas City Chiefs in an AFC divisional round game at Arrowhead Stadium on Jan. 17.
The 2019 champion Chiefs went on to advance to their second consecutive Super Bowl.
As Stefanski prepares for the regularseason opener, a Sept. 12 rematch with the Chiefs at Arrowhead, Cowher was struck by a question from the reigning NFL Coach of the Year when they spoke after the season.
“The first thing was, ‘How do you come off a playoff year and all of a sudden reestablish yourself?’ ” Cowher said during the NFL on CBS Media Day videoconference last week. “I said, ‘Listen, you don’t forget where you came from. You have to remember how you got there.’
“Kevin Stefanski is about building a culture. The biggest thing right now is the foundation he wants to build. He’s keeping people accountable. No one’s bigger than the team. It isn’t about how many touches I get here, how many touches I get there. He takes it one game at a time until they really accomplish something.”
Jim Nantz, the voice of CBS and the network’s lead NFL play-by-play man, was intrigued by Cowher’s comments.
“I got really tuned in to listen to Bill Cowher,” Nantz said in a phone interview. “Good for Kevin. He’s on it. How do you back up a playoff year? I think that’s the biggest question mark for them.
“It’s the opposite storyline than it’s always been. It’s always been, ‘They’re not that good in this particular area.’ They’re good top to bottom. Now how do you make it work? How to mentally make it work? How do you get the team to come back and jell and get on that roll again?”
During the videoconference, CBS analyst Phil Simms pointed out, “Coaching really matters in the NFL.”
Former quarterback Simms knows. He reached the playoffs seven times in his 15 years with the New York Giants, won two championships, and was named Super Bowl MVP in 1986. Hall of Famer Bill Parcells was Simms’ coach for eight seasons and the Giants reached the playoffs in five of those and won both titles (though Simms was injured during the playoffs for the second run).
“There’s a simplicity about Kevin Stefanski that players, they come to him,” Cowher said. “You’re right, Phil, coaching is something. It’s about bringing people together. It’s about identifying what your strengths are, but more importantly being able to mask what your weaknesses are, to have people embrace the roles that they have.
“I think the one thing he has brought is humility and unselfishness to that football team.”
That was the focus of Stefanski’s talk with Dungy before an Aug. 8 practice at Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium. When he was hired by the Browns, Stefanski had spent the previous 14 years in Minnesota and met Dungy through former Vikings coach Leslie Frazier. With Dungy in town for Pro Football Hall of Fame weekend, Stefanski invited Dungy to address the team.
Now an NBC analyst, Dungy said during an Aug. 31 conference call that he and Stefanski talked a lot about “culture and creating that winning atmosphere.”
“I feel like it is a group that is bought in to what coach Stefanski is bringing to them, and that is that atmosphere that ‘We have to be together, we’re in this as a unit, we’re going to be physical and that’s how we’re going to play,’ ” said Dungy, who played defensive back for the Steelers in 1977-78. “It was kind of exciting to watch. I think they’re going to be a very, very good football team.
“Obviously with my Steeler roots it was tough being in there in the midst of the Browns, but I enjoyed it and I think Coach Stefanski has really brought something special there. He got everybody to buy in. They’re on board. You see a team that really believes in their head coach, and that’s why I think they’re going to be good.”
Nantz was not surprised that Stefanski picked the brains of Dungy, who won the Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts (2006 season), and Cowher, who led the Steelers to the Super Bowl twice and won at the end of the 2005 season.
“A year ago when we tried to look at the Browns season, there were questions,” Nantz said. “Was (quarterback Baker) Mayfield going to be better than he was the previous year? Yes, definitely upgraded his game and became everything the Browns drafted him to be. But there were larger questions. This had ended the one-year Freddie Kitchens era. The overriding question was had they made the right call on the coach?
“That’s not a question anymore. Everybody in the league sees the guy has the ‘it’ quality.”
Nantz and partner Tony Romo called only two Browns games in 2020: the Browns’ 38-7 loss in Pittsburgh on Oct. 18 and the playoff loss to the Chiefs. Production meetings before the games were held on Zoom because of the pandemic. But even with the technological disconnect, Nantz was still impressed by Stefanski.
“There’s something about his presence, it demands your respect,” Nantz said. “He has a way about him that makes you feel like he’s been in that position handling all that responsibility for many years. He didn’t seem like a rookie head coach. Extremely well organized. Confident in what his message was. Had a way of making you understand as a narrator of the broadcast that they were completely prepared.
“There was just a way about him. I felt like I was sitting with a guy that has been doing this for 10 years. I never got a sense of it being the rookie growing process for him at all.”
Stefanski is the Browns’ 12th head coach (counting interims) since 1999, and Nantz said he believes co-owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, starting their 10th season in Cleveland, have finally found the right one.
“It’s got to be a good feeling to be a member of the Browns faithful and know you’ve got a guy who’s steering the ship who knows where he’s going,” Nantz said.