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Random thoughts . . .
Nice to see the Browns steal the show recently at the annual National Football League Honors gala with Myles Garrett, Joe Flacco, Kevin Stefanski and Jim Schwartz taking enter stage. All richly deserved the accolades.
Stefanski took down Coach the Year; Garrett captured Defensive Player of the Year; Schwartz took down Assistant Coach of the Year, and Flacco was named Comeback Player of the Year.
Nice haul. However, it doesn't make the resounding Wild-Card playoffs loss to the Houston Texans easier to digest. That one will take a while.
But it was encouraging to see many of the pundits who roam the NFL landscape recognize the future of the franchise is not as dismal as more than a few others believe. For the first time in a long time, stability has taken up residence in Cleveland.
Stefanski and General Manager Andrew Berry are entering their fifth season as guardians of the front office. They have booked two playoff appearances. Stefanski has also quietly won the most games (37) of any head coach in the post-1999 period. That's one more than Bill Belichick posted in 13 fewer games as head coach before the move to Baltimore.
Lasting that long in Cleveland in those jobs borders on the near-miraculous for a franchise that has not practiced patience since it returned to the NFL in 1999. Job security and working for the Cleveland Browns do not belong in the same sentence.
Stefanski returns with his second coach-of-the-year award after guiding the Browns through a season loaded with seemingly non-stop injuries and a minefield that included numerous games won -- often times miraculously -- on the final play of games.
Accomplishing it with four different quarterbacks made it not just more difficult, but virtually impossible. Beating odds like that is what won it for him.
My only quarrel there is Houston's Demeco Ryans deserved the award more. The rookie head coach took over a franchise that had won just 11 games total in the previous three seasons and guided it to a 10-7 record and a playoff appearance for the first since 2019. And he did it with a rookie quarterback who also happened to be special.
He topped it off in the Wild-Card game, ambushing the Browns, 45-14, before falling to Baltimore in the Divisional round. Ryans and Stefanski tied with the most points in the balloting with Stefanski breaking the tie with more first-place votes. (Correcting an earlier version of this story that had Ryans winning with more first-place votes.)
As for Garrett, rather than get into another argument with regard to the value and his importance to the team, I remain firm in the belief he is the second-best defensive player in the NFL behind Pittsburgh's T. J. Watt. They are both great and special, but in different ways.
Their argument is of the apples-and-oranges variety. They are entirely different players who play different positions that affect their statistics differently, thus creating the annual argument as to who is more valuable.
Garrett, without question, is the better pass rusher. But that is the only job: Creating havoc in the offensive backfield is all he does. Granted he does it well. His main value lies in the pre-snap phase of a play. Find Garrett and stop him. And you'll generally see him in a three-point stance at one of the ends ready to pounce.
Watt, on the other hand, is an outside linebacker who rarely lines up in a three-point stance. He's either rushing the passer from a standing start, dropping back into some form of pass coverage or filling gaps in the defensive line expecting a run.
In other words, you can expect him lined up just about anywhere depending on the defense called. Garrett is a stationary target and less likely to fill up stats sheet. Watt will almost always compile better stats because he'll almost always be in the vicinity of the football.
I think Watt is more valuable because he can affect the outcomes of games more, for example, with caused fumbles, subsequent recoveries and interceptions as he has done for many seasons with the Steelers. He also has the innate the knack of making big plays when you least expect them.
Schwartz was a slam dunk as the assistant coach of the year. In one short season, the veteran defensive coordinator changed the culture of a defense that achieved historic highs and set a tone that will be difficult to replicate.
Flacco also was a slam dunk with a sensational season -- actually a sensational six weeks span down the homestretch. But without him, the Browns don't make the playoffs. Schwartz's defense was great, but they were going nowhere after Deshaun Watson went down for good in late October with shoulder problems.
When Flacco took Berry's telephone call of desperation while waiting for any team desperate enough to call while waiting in his his parents' home in New Jersey two-thirds of the way into the season, little did he realize what laid ahead.
He won four of his first five starts, throwing for 13 touchdowns, eight interceptions and 1,616 yards. He breathed life into an offense that had become stuck in mediocrity under Watson. He singlehandedly hauled the Browns back into playoff contention and became the toast of the town.
I could tell from the first snap of his first game against the Los Angeles Rams that he would be better than many of the Cleveland quarterbacks who had worn the uniform for nearly a generation. He had a confidence, a swagger that deemed to lift his teammates to play at a higher level.
It was all garnered while playing 15 seasons of championship football with the Baltimore Ravens. For whatever reason, it all came back to him after a long layoff he did not expect. The latest award is truly well deserved and most meaningful because of the manner in which is was accomplished.
Even at his advanced age of 39, Flacco right now is a better quarterback than Watson. Too bad the Haslam family unwisely decided a couple of years ago to head down a different road. That decision will haunt this franchise for at least the next three seasons.
