With the NFL’s 2026 coaching carousel now winding to a close, the focal point is about to shift to free agency and the draft. There's no two-month stretch on the NFL calendar quite like March and April, when fans are repeatedly reminded that, aside from maybe the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, no one knows anything and everyone’s just guessing.
When it comes to the Cleveland Browns, we could say that exact same thing about their recent head coach search.
With all due respect to local and national reporters who covered Cleveland’s three-plus-week ordeal, no one had a clue which way Browns brass was leaning. Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski spent days as the team’s reported frontrunner. Ditto for Nate Scheelhaase, the young passing game coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams, later in the process.
Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz? He seemed to cycle from perceived frontrunner, to fallback option, back to frontrunner by the week.
No one had Todd Monken as a serious finalist, never mind the leader in the clubhouse from the start of the team’s virtual round of interviews. That’s a feather in the cap of Cleveland’s inner circle, which did a fine job of hiding secrets, even as the outside poked holes in their unique process.
Owner Jimmy Haslam essentially took a victory lap on Tuesday, stating that most of the reporting on his team’s head coach search wasn’t true. He also confirmed to reporters the one thing that everyone got wrong about Monken, and where the veteran coach ranked among the Browns’ other candidates all along.
Todd Monken was Browns' unanimous No. 1 throughout the entire hiring process
Haslam said the Browns kicked-off their head coach search with a list of 20-25 candidates. The team only ended up interviewing about half of them, but their committee never wavered on the man at the top of the list.
“I would say Todd was at the top of our list the entire time,” Haslam said. “I think our search lasted 20 days, and I would say he was leading the pack, or in the front pack, the whole time.”
That’s news to almost everyone, as the Monken hire hit like a shockwave back on Feb. 28. From the ripple effect with Schwartz, to the team pushing their chips all-in on a 60-year-old with no prior NFL head-coaching experience, it took the whole weekend for Browns fans to fully digest their team's decision.
It makes more sense, though, with each passing day. Monken wasted no time getting to work on his offensive staff, in a fashion that would be hard to fathom with a young, more inexperienced coach like Udinski or Scheelhaase. His overall approach and messaging during his introductory press conference on Tuesday was striking, signaling the kind of change this franchise sorely needed (and might not have gotten by simply promoting Schwartz, who spent the past three years on Kevin Stefanski's staff).
We’re about to enter free agency and mock draft season, when speculation runs rampant and, again, no one really knows anything. There’s definitely that element of mystery with Monken, and Browns fans should be bracing for another curveball or two during this next important phase of the offseason.