Kevin Stefanski will improve due to play calls he’s currently ‘sick about’
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski wishes he could have some fourth quarter play calls back.
Cleveland Browns coach Kevin Stefanski admitted after the loss to the Los Angeles Chargers that “In hindsight, I definitely wish I did something different. This is where I have to put our guys in position to succeed. I didn’t do that there and I’m sick about it.”
The coach, to his great credit, agrees with those of us who were critical of his play calls in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Chargers. These were not conservative play calls as some fans had suggested.
No, no, no. A conservative play call is Nick Chubb up the middle, and if he makes no yards, then ask Baker Mayfield to look for a short pass target to any of five targets, all of whom were viable targets, with Odell Beckham, Jr. at the top of the list.
Rather, the plays that were called were outside the realm of rational football.
No team that has Baker Mayfield, Nick Chubb and Odell Beckham, Jr. on it should contemplate sending Kareem Hunt up the middle on a draw play with third and nine, in a situation where maintaining possession would have guaranteed victory and giving Justin Herbert and the Chargers one last possession with time on the clock is a virtual death sentence.
So, should fans start hating on the coach now?
Far from it. Strong men admit when they screw up. Weak ones assign blame to others. Everybody screws up from time to time. Baker misses his reads on occasion. OBJ had a drop in the first half. Mayfield had a few bad passes.
As for Chubb…well…you know what? I can’t think of a single thing that Chubb did wrong all day. But you know what I mean. Nobody is perfect. Tommy Twelvepack acts like he is perfect and wants to fire the coach who admitted he made a mistake, but Tommy is full of it.
The coach is at a low point in his Cleveland career right now. Some people will want to line up and kick him while he’s down, but this is the time to rally behind him.
Not to sound like Terrelle Owens, but he’s our coach, the coach of our team, and he’s a young guy who makes mistakes. So what? Every one makes mistakes. He’s going to learn from his mistakes if we give him a chance.
This team really could win the Super Bowl. At the beginning of the season, this fan said that the team had the talent to win the division, and that the Chiefs were overrated, so quit thinking they are predestined to go to the Super Bowl every year. The team with the best quarterback does not always go to the Super Bowl every year, and if you don’t believe it, ask Aaron Rodgers. Or you might ask Justin Herbert, because he might really be the best rather than Mahomes.
Anyway, yes, the Browns could win it all. But thinking that it was going to be easy and that they would roll to 13 or 14 wins is very unlikely. This game is not for the faint of heart.
This is not the time to start booing the coach and the quarterback. What, you want Freddie back? You didn’t get enough of Johnny Manziel or DeShone Kizer? We’ve got our guys, let’s let them ride out the storm and it’s going to be all right eventually.
For the record, Freddie Kitchens made a similar playcall in 2019. In fact, he called a draw on FOURTH down and nine yards, which made national headlines for its sheer lunacy. Of course, the Browns did not make it. According to Josh Hermsmeyer of Fivethirtyeight.com, since they started keeping records of this sort of thing circa 2006, no team had ever tried a draw play with fourth down and more than seven yards for a first down.
Third down and nine might be a bit more commonplace than fourth down and nine as a situation for a draw play, but it still seems very, very far-fetched.
I was not able to immediately find data for 3rd and 9 situations. However, as a possibe proxy for third and nine, Mike Tanier of Bleacher Report claims that the success rate for 3rd down and 10-plus yards is only 7.5% on the ground. Short passes were successful 11.7% of the time. Longer passes had a success rate of 29.6%. Taking the 7.5% success rate is not conservative; it is just a bad idea. The coach just made a lapse of judgment. Very likely he won’t make the same mistake twice.
Browns Week 5 grades. dark. Next
Woody Hayes, the old Ohio State coach, used to say that players and teams usually get better or they get worse, but they rarely stay the same. Very likely coach Stefanski will be one of those who improves.