One of the first indications the Cleveland Browns had found a keeper in coach Kevin Stefanski came in his first year on the job, in 2020, when the rookie coach overcame all the hurdles and challenges the COVID season threw at coaches, especially rookie coaches, and, in this case, a rookie coach taking over one of the NFL’s most inept franchises.
It was amazing that Stefanski was even interested in the job, given that Browns officials, after interviewing him for their head coaching job the previous year, instead hired Freddie Kitchens.
The Kitchens Era lasted one season, after which the Browns came back again to Stefanski, who at the time was in his 14th year on the coaching staff of the Minnesota Vikings, as the offensive coordinator. This time the Browns offered him the job. He accepted, and the team has not had to hire a head coach since.
Stefanski’s arrival fundamentally changed the arc of the franchise, and it did not take long for that change to occur. In his first year coaching the Browns, in 2020, Stefanski guided them to a regular-season record of 11-5, the franchise’s first winning season in 12 years and only its second winning season in 21 years.
The icing on the cake that season was a 48-37 Cleveland win over the Steelers, in Pittsburgh, in a wild card game, a victory that Stefanski orchestrated from the basement of his home in the Cleveland area, to which he was quarantined after testing positive for COVID.
The Browns then lost 22-17 to Kansas City in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. Cleveland finished the year with a record of 12-6, and the team’s dramatic turnaround led to Stefanski, in his first year on the job, being voted the NFL’s Coach of the Year.
