Cleveland Browns Closing in on Joe Woods as Defensive Coordinator, Inform Wilks He Won't Be Back
The Cleveland Browns are closing in on their defensive coordinator under new head coach Kevin Stefanski. According to Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com, the Browns have informed Steve Wilks, the defensive coordinator under Freddie Kitchens, that he will not be retained under Stefanski. Adam Schefter of ESPN is reporting that the Browns have all but come to an agreement with Joe Woods, currently working for the San Francisco 49ers; it's simply a matter of working out the details on a contract.
Steve Wilks was by no means a bad defensive coordinator. He made some poor decisions with the Browns, such as calling Jermaine Whitehead a leader, but he came up with excellent game plans in most every game of the season, save for the game against the 49ers where his defense was thoroughly humiliated. There were any number of games where the Browns would get beat despite being put in the right positions. They simply weren't good enough to execute.
And obviously, the defense took a massive hit when they lost Myles Garrett for the year due to his suspension and lost Olivier Vernon's best to a knee injury. He was already stuck with some rookies like Mack Wilson, but once they lost the impact players up front not named Sheldon Richardson, Wilks was left to play street free agents and rookies all over the defense.
The other issue that Wilks ran into was playing Greedy Williams and Denzel Ward in zone coverage. Wilks ran a lot of Cover-3, which was unpopular. That said, Ward, after recovering from his hamstring injury, was fantastic. Williams was a rookie already struggling and then he sustained a hamstring injury which made a bad situation worse.
Joe Woods was excellent as a defensive coordinator for the Denver Broncos in 2017 and 2018. He was let go when they fired the head coach, opting to go with Vic Fangio. As a result, Woods had to get another job and ended up in the role he had this year with the 49ers.
Woods coached with the Minnesota Vikings for eight seasons and started in 2006, the same year as Stefanski did, so they know each other quite well. In 2015, he took a job with the Denver Broncos where he coached defensive backs under Wade Phillips until he took over the defense for two seasons while Phillips went to the Los Angeles Rams.
Woods coaches the same type of scheme that Phillips did. A 4-3 under scheme that may often feature a standup edge rusher and most of the rest of the scheme adapts based on the talent he has. If Woods insists on a standup, it would be reasonable to assume it would be Vernon, who's done it before in his time with the New York Giants. In essence, Vernon would be Von Miller while Garrett would be in the same role as Bradley Chubb.
His significant experience coaching defensive backs, 12 years in all, has to be one of the areas that really makes Woods an exciting hire for the Browns. Not only does that mean he gets to continue working with Ward and helping the development of Williams, the Browns could be utilizing young safeties as it's unlikely Damarious Randall will be retained. The area with the least experience and polish will have a coordinator that can specialize in helping in their development.
Obviously, Woods will have to finish out his run with the 49ers before can officially accept the job, so if the 49ers win the NFC Championship, the Browns will wait another two weeks for the Super Bowl to then be able to officially hire Woods.
