Browns Get Crushing Reminder of What Could Have Been With Super Bowl-Bound Head Coach

The Cleveland Browns have been working on next season for a while, including an ongoing head coach search so thorough it’s practically unheard of.

Meanwhile, a current head coach for another AFC franchise is preparing his players for a Super Bowl LX appearance, one year after serving as part of the Browns’ staff.

After spending the 2024 season under a coaching and personnel consultant role in Cleveland, Mike Vrabel was hired as the New England Patriots’ head coach -- with whom he’ll now try to add a ring to his resumé -- leaving Browns’ fans wondering “what if” the team had chosen to replace Kevin Stefanski on year earlier.

Vrabel had served as the head coach for the Tennessee Titans for six years, a period of time that included two division titles, three playoff appearances and one AFC Championship Game. After being fired from Tennessee, he spent the 2024 season working as a consultant for the Browns, coming off a dismal 3-14 season.

Once the Patriots top position became open at the end of the 2024 season with the firing of then head coach Jerod Mayo, Vrabel -- a former Patriots player who won three Super Bowls with the franchise -- became an obvious favorite to take the reins in New England. Vrabel needed just one season to turn the Patriots’ fortunes around, leading the team to a No. 2 seed in the playoffs, and a huge road win in the Divisional Round against the top-seeded Denver Broncos.

New England is now set to appear in its 13th Super Bowl, aiming for a seventh Lombardi trophy. Cleveland is barely getting through a head coach search that has seen at least four candidates ask the club to remove them from consideration for the gig.

To be fair, it would have been nearly impossible for Cleveland to replace Stefanski with Vrabel, considering that even after 2024’s miserable 3-14 record, the team was just one year removed from Stefanski’s second Coach of the Year Award, and holding on to such a coveted coach as Vrabel in a consulting role would seem unlikely for another year.

Nevertheless, the way things played out still has Cleveland’s fan base wondering what could have been.

The Browns’ are also somewhat familiar with the other Super Bowl-bound head coach

Cleveland also has a bit of history with the head coach of the NFC Champions Seattle Seahawks, Mike Macdonald, although not as tight as with Vrabel.

Before taking the wheel in Seattle for the 2024 season, he spent two years as the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. And before a one-year stint at Michigan, he also climbed up the assistant coach ladder in Baltimore, going from coaching intern in 2014, to two seasons as defensive assistant, to defensive backs coach in 2017 and linebackers coach from 2018 to 2020. In other words, Cleveland got to see him grow and mature as a coach from up close, playing Baltimore twice a season for a number of years.

The closest these Browns may have gotten to Macdonald, though, is interviewing current Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde early in their ongoing process.

Considering where things stand with Cleveland’s coaching search, after reports of the franchise making candidates jump through a series of very uncommon hoops, it’s pretty wild to think that the Browns weren’t too far removed from these now Super Bowl-bound head coaches.