Why the Cleveland Browns should not wait to start making coaching changes

Black Monday came early for New York Jets defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, who was fired today by head coach Aaron Glenn after the team’s lop-sided loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars by a score of 48-20.

A former Cleveland Browns' assistant coach, Wilks was in charge of defense for the 2019 season under head coach Freddie Kinchens, lasting just one season with the organization.

With the Browns jockeying for position at the top of the order of next April’s draft with, among other teams, the Jets, should Cleveland follow suit and begin staff changeover even before the current campaign is finished?

The short answer is yes, and it starts at the top.

Sunday’s catastrophic performance revealed more evidence that Browns’ players are simply not responding to head coach Kevin Stefanski anymore. And if a 31-3 pounding at the hands of the Chicago Bears weren’t bad enough, the whole wristband fiasco with rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders -- where Stefanski claims he was given last week’s plays -- just seems too unprofessional to keep the situation going.

Stefanski, whose reputation as an offensive guru helped him land the job in Cleveland in 2020, has already gone through three quarterbacks this year, with none of them winning more than one game. And with each passing week, it seems like the offensive miscues just keep multiplying.

Stefanski relinquished game-calling duties in early November, in favor of offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, who’d never called plays at this level before. But even so, Stefanski admitted that it was his play choice during the failed two-point conversion that sealed Cleveland’s loss to the Tennessee Titans one week ago.

Stefanski’s handling of the whole quarterback situation since spring has seemed amateurish, at best, and the Browns are no closer today to finding out if they have a franchise quarterback on the roster, than they were before drafting two rookies in last April’s draft.

The only certainty at this point seems to be that the third round pick invested in Dillon Gabriel was a waste.

As for Jim Schwartz, the team’s defensive coordinator, perhaps it's time he gets a second shot as an NFL head coach, with the last three games as an audition for the permanent gig. Schwartz has ties that run deeper with the club than his current tenure leading the defense, one that started in 2023. Schwartz was a personnel scout for the franchise from 1993 to 1995, his first NFL job.

Why not let Schwartz evaluate Rees during the last three games, and see if the offense has any future under his guidance without Stefanski’s shadow over him. If he should decide to keep him for 2026, then great, Sanders and whomever makes up the rest of the quarterback room can start working on next year right away. If not, Schwartz has the clout necessary to find a suitable replacement to manage his offense.

Either way, if one thing has become apparent this season is that the defense is responding to Schwartz in a much more palpable way than the offense to the Stefanski/Rees combo. And with three tough games remaining on schedule, why not start the inevitable sooner rather than later, as Cleveland’s next rebuild is already knocking on the door.