Kevin Stefanski may be on the proverbial hot seat in the world of social media, but the Cleveland Browns head coach appears to be in no danger of being fired after this season.
The Browns are underperforming significantly at 3-8, but have won two of their last four games against their AFC North rivals in the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers.
And the win over the Steelers came in frigid, snowy conditions that would have forced a bad team to fold.
Cleveland blew a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter against Pittsburgh, but went on to come back for a 24-19 win. This is a team that is still playing extremely hard for their manager.
Stefanski certainly wasn’t as good a coach as he was last season. He won 11 games and was named NFL Coach of the Year for the second time in four seasons. The Browns have lost by at least 16 points in four games.
Exploding so many times is never a good thing.
But funny enough, the team seems to have become more cohesive now that Deshaun Watson is out for the season with an Achilles tendon injury.
Watson made a colossal $230 million mistake, and his reputation suffered further after more than 20 massage therapists accused him of sexual harassment.
No matter what the players say on the outside, know that many people have different things to say about Watson in person and are not impressed with his off-the-field behavior.
So perhaps the real decision is whether to go in a different direction at quarterback and part ways with Watson.
In this case, find the quarterback of the future and use Jameis Winston as a bridge signal caller until the young player is ready.
I look at the two 11-win seasons the Browns enjoyed under Stefanski and think about how Cleveland didn’t have a single winning season in 2008-19.
You may remember them experiencing an embarrassing winless season in 2017, going 1-31 in two seasons under Hue Jackson.
At that rate, it would have taken Jackson 22 seasons to total 11 wins.
Or how about the 2020 playoff win over the Steelers under Stefanski? This was their only postseason win in 25 seasons since this version of the franchise began in 1999.
Of course, things didn’t go well for the Browns, who lost 45-14 to the Houston Texans in the AFC Wild Card round last January.
Stefanski is 40-38 with the Browns, and his previous worst record in Cleveland was 7-10 in 2022.
The Browns really need to pull themselves together to get seven wins this season, but they could probably split their final six games to finish at 6-11.
The only real way to consider letting Stefanski go is if the team completely falls apart and ends up 3-14 or 4-13.
Of course, owner Jimmy Haslam is not known to be very patient, so perhaps this season will be disappointing enough for him to move on.
In this case, he should research some of the coaches the Browns have had over the last 16 seasons.
Freddie Kitchens. Jackson, mentioned earlier. Mike Pettin. Rob Chudzinski. Pat Schumer. Eric Mangini.
None of those guys have had a single winning season.
Stefanski may never be the next Paul Brown, but he’s certainly a better coach than anyone on that list.
This franchise’s two 11-win seasons will say it all.
Bring Stefanski back and give it one more try. If he underperforms in 2025, show him the door.
But it’s clear that Stefanski is the best man for the job on the shores of Lake Erie next season.
