A return with a flavor of challenge
The Cleveland Browns have closed their coaching search. And they did it by bringing back a familiar face: Todd Monken.
It wasn’t the most obvious choice, but there it is. Baltimore’s offensive coordinator for the past three years becomes the franchise’s 19th full-time head coach. He takes over for Kevin Stefanski, fired after a 5-12 season.
“After announcing Stefanski’s firing, Jimmy Haslam was upset by the narrative that the Browns are a chaotic organization,” recalls the original note.
But the truth is that the process was… complicated. More candidates withdrew their names than became finalists. Monken, who will turn 60 in February, beat out defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz and other hopefuls.
A past that weighs (and an uncertain future)
Monken was already here. He was offensive coordinator in 2019. Then he went to Georgia, where he won two national titles, and then starred in Baltimore.
His first big challenge will be trying to retain Jim Schwartz as defensive coordinator. Schwartz is the brains behind one of the best defenses in the league and is under contract for one more year, but will he want to stay after failing to land the top job?
The monumental task, however, is on the other side of the ball. Finding a quarterback and fixing an offense that has been an impossible puzzle.
Stefanski used 13 different starting quarterbacks in his time. The Deshaun Watson experiment, for which they gave up five draft picks, has been a costly failure.
Watson has only played 19 games, with a mediocre record, and is coming off a serious injury. Jimmy Haslam admitted in March: “we tried really hard and we failed.”
Shedeur Sanders played the last seven games with mixed results (3-4). The next few months will decide if it is the option to start the next campaign.
Monken is the seventh coach hired by the Haslams since 2012. The previous six had a disastrous combined record: 73-139-1. The pressure to break that curse starts now.
With picks 6 and 24 in April’s draft in his pocket, he at least has tools to start building.
