Browns Officially Hire Drew Petzing To Coach Tight Ends
The Cleveland Browns officially named Drew Petzing to Kevin Stefanski's coaching staff on Monday, giving him the title of tight ends coach. Petzing spent six seasons with the Minnesota Vikings alongside Stefanski after a year with the Browns as a coaching intern in 2013, but this will be his first season with the title of tight ends coach.
On Petzing, Stefanski said the following:
"I think he's one of the smartest coaches I've been around. I say that because he coached defense in college, he's moved to the offensive side of the ball, been in the running backs room, the wide receivers room, the quarterbacks room. I think that type of breadth of experience is really important as you're developing as a young coach. I think anybody who has been around him sees somebody that has a great knowledge of the game."
While Petzing will coach tight ends, which is important for Stefanski's offense, it sounds like he will have a bigger role in the offensive staff in general. The Vikings ran the most two tight end sets of any team in the league last year, so if Stefanski intends to carry that over, Petzing will have to be able to get his group ready.
David Njoku is entering a critical year, his fourth, as the team has to decide what they will do about his fifth-year option. Njoku's wrist injury caused him to miss almost the entire season for the Browns last year and when he was healthy, he played poorly. The hope coming into 2019 was that Njoku was ready to take a massive leap forward after being top ten among tight ends in receiving yardage at the end of 2018 including an impressive final month of that season.
The Browns also have Demetrius Harris, Ricky Seals-Jones, Pharaoh Brown and Stephen Carlson in the tight end room currently. Petzing will have a big job getting that unit to be productive and be the strength it was supposed to be last year, but Stefanski's endorsement sounds like he will have a staff that accepts input from all of its coaches, which is why he likes Petzing's experience at other positions and defense.
