How the Cleveland Browns could follow the steps of the 49ers

1. Creative play calling

Kyle Shanahan quickly turned around the Niners offense with his creative play calling. He is one of the most creative minds in football, especially when designing run plays and finding ways to get his play-makers the ball. As previously mentioned, he used three different running backs and often times even had several on the field at the same time.

He was very good at using motion and other movements to create confusion for the defense and create running lanes for his backs. He also loved getting Deebo Samuel the ball in unique ways for him to make plays. The passing game stemmed from the run and created great openings for receivers off play-action.

The Browns will get a similar scheme this fall with Stefanski. Stefanski also liked using two backs in the backfield on occasion, and what better backfield to do that with than Chubb and Hunt. Freddie Kitchens tried it some last year and had great success for the most part. To the confusion of most Browns fans, he seemed to never go back to it after it worked.

Stefanski also loves to develop the run to open the passing game. He had two great receivers with the Vikings, Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen. Although they were a run-first team, both their receivers had over a 1,000 yards in 2018. In 2019, Diggs had over 1,000 again, but Thielen was hurt for over six and a half games. Stefanski has proven to get both the running game and passing game going and fill the stat sheet for the players.

Unlike with Kitchens, Stefanski will bring a unique game plan into each contest and not abandon it. He will have set plays ready and certain areas he wants to attack the defense. There should be less confusion at the line of scrimmage for Mayfield and the rest of the offense. Stefanski and his scheme, with the help of the Browns elite talent on the roster, can rival that of Shanahan in San Francisco

Similarly to the 49ers, the Browns have a solid unit on both sides of the trenches, great running backs, a new tight end and fullback, as well as a creative play-caller. These characteristics will help the Browns tremendously in 2020 and could perhaps lead them to their first playoff appearance since 2002.