Off-season thoughts (Vol. IX )

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Not when it comes to the Browns' offense. It's broke and needs fixing. Prospects of that occurring are slim at best..

That's because Browns head coach and offensive playcaller Kevin Stefanski, who sits in the command seat when his team owns the football, announced the other day at the annual Scouting Combine in Indianapolis that he will not relinquish his playcalling duties this coming season.

Too bad.

It's only a guess that ego -- perhaps stubbornness? -- has something to do with not ceding control of the football to Alex Van Pelt, who is the offensive coordinator in name only. Sure, he'll help with authoring the playbook, but that's about it.

Stefanski, who had only one season's experience at calling plays prior to his arrival in Cleveland, has compiled a two-year résumé with failure outweighing success by a sizable margin. He is not the boy wonder who led his team to the playoffs in his rookie season.

It took a half season in 2020 for Stefanski and quarterback Baker Mayfield to arrive on the same page. The result was an offensive juggernaut that propelled the Browns into the postseason, overcoming an awful defense on a weekly basis.

Stefanski was hailed as a Cleveland hero. The club finally landed a head coach who got it. First half of the season, meh. Second half, gangbusters with the immediate future rife with suggestions Cleveland was finally, after all those miserable years since being resurrected in 1999, in Super Bowl territory.

And then 2021 happened. No need to go over the particulars. Fans saw what unfolded and have a pretty good idea why. The wonderful offense that helped lift Stefanski to the lofty status of National Football League Coach of the Year disappeared. A little tarnish on that one.

No longer were Stefanski and Mayfield on the same page. They weren't even in the same library. On at least a couple of occasions during the season, the besieged Mayfield publicly questioned the playcalling of his head coach. 

Stefanski stamped out the fire on that one, insisting there were no problems. Or at least problems that could actually be smoothed out. 

The more advanced the season became, the worse it got. Very little worked. Despite getting beaten up on a regular basis and not meshing with Stefanski's calls, Mayfield soldiered on. The only way the Browns had a chance of winning was a strong showing by the defense.

When it became apparent a repeat appearance in the playoffs wasn't happening, Stefanski stuck with it rather than turning to Van Pelt to see what he could do so he could concentrate on being a head coach. It was an option to which he gave no consideration.

Instead, he seems determined to prove he is more like the playcaller of the second half of the 2020 season than the other season and a half where the offense played inconsistently and, at times, poorly enough to wonder if a change would help.

When opposing teams this past season took away the Browns' rollout, bootleg and misdirection packages, which were so successful in the 2020 surge to the postseason, Stefanski moved on to an offense that confined Mayfield to the pocket, where he is noticeably uncomfortable.

He in essence gave up on a vital part of his offense and placed his already-injured quarterback on an island with precious little help from an offensive line that underachieved and a receiving corps weakened by injuries and a general lack of talent. 

Rather than modify that aspect of his offense, he abandoned it and made his quarterback a relatively stationary target. The result was nearly three sacks a game and a pounding that forced him to skip the final game of the regular season and head to the surgery theater to get fixed and be ready for the 2022 campaign.

And what will he be ready for? A head coach and playcaller still stubborn enough to give calling plays one more shot in an effort to prove the success he experienced in the second half of 2020 was not a fluke.