The Kevin Stefanski: Two-Time Coach of the Year Thread

[Amherstcavsfan]

Why Kevin Stefanski? Browns see him as first answer to fixing institutional dysfunction of the Jimmy Haslam era

Has Browns ownership learned anything during this brutal process of warring and attrition?

sports.yahoo.com

Absolutely worth your time to read.

 

[Phills14]

I don't like this comparison at all. Paul Brown was the coach and leader of the organization. He should be the guy that is driving the use of that kind of stuff. It should be driven by the man who directs the ongoings of the football field, not by the part time strategy guy in San Diego. If analytics are going to be used, they should be used at the behest of the coach.

You are missing the point I am trying to make. Using advanced data to make better decisions is happening in business and sports. It is not going away and will only gain more acceptance. My point is, when film work was introduced I’m sure there were people who didn’t think that was important. Now it’s a staple of the game and indepensible. Data, advanced stats, analytics, whatever you want to call it, are being using to make better decisions. Mocking the use of it is like mocking the use of film work in the 1950s.

 

[I'mWithDan]

Haslam and his ole lady just can't leave things alone, meddling in areas they know nothing about. Just write the checks and STFU. Sadly their plan is doomed for failure

Lots of ownership styles can work......but rarely do you ever find a successful owner who just quietly writes checks. Owners who genuinely care are almost always the best ones......and caring doesn't stop at just looking at payroll and moving on with other things in your daily life.

The Haslam's big failing, IMO, is having too open of a relationship with the media.......or possibly someone around them having too open of a relationship. Much of what they do just matters far less behind closed doors but starts to really become a narrative and then subsequently a distraction in public.

I don't know that they are truly bad owners but I do know that they are incredibly misguided......and being incredibly misguided can make you look like a truly bad owner. It's likely they are somewhere in between........and if they made a concerted effort to avoid some of these peripheral media leaks, would make it easier for the people they have hired to succeed.

The cardinal sin of anyone in charge of an organization is thinking everything you have to say in public, on any subject, is productive. You can be candid but understanding the line between what should be public and what should be private is essential in creating a culture where you can collectively make mistakes (and correct them), yet pull in the same direction.

 

[col63onel]

"Expectations are now higher than last year..."

 

[Phills14]

Just having had some experience with this.......I think even meetings like this are largely overblown.

I don't have a rosy view of Haslam but I have had enough professional experience with executives / owners to understand how their minds work. Naming names isn't important here.....but there were "good" owners who were doing the above, just not publicly stating it was being done.....and generally speaking, most of us (even here...on this message board), would laugh at the depth of those conversations. I put together a handful of "owner" presentations and it's stuff you'd show your girlfriend or mom, who can't be bothered to understand all the nuances of football but wants to know what is happening.

Honestly, ownership and executives just want to understand baseline strategy and execution. Haslam truly wants to sit in a meeting, hear Stefanski and Co. talk about one or two power point slides and anecdotally be able to lean over to his buddy in the owners box on gameday and say "That TD was perfect. We noticed we weren't throwing enough on second down and put in some packages this week to make it happen". Buddy thinks owner is a God and they all go about their day.

Do some owners go beyond that? I would imagine so.....but if we are just talking about generic owner, wether good or bad, they generally just want to feel involved......and that surface level involvement, more times than not, leads them to stay out of everyone's more important business......because they feel more included / plugged in to what is going on.

I would just try to calm the fears over any of these media type stories mattering. The best organizations start as a wide, vast stream of collaborative efforts and then slowly narrow over time / with success. If Stefanski starts stringing 10 win seasons together, Haslam is gonna stop caring about his Monday morning meeting or even better yet, ask Stefanski if it is helpful. Once success starts to take hold, it stops being about who should be involved and starts being about who shouldn't. The hallmark of success, at least in sports....to me, is getting to that tipping point.......to where it stops being about having success and starts being about how to sustain it.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. It’s the personalities that are involved that causes my reaction. Haslam has put his fingers in a lot of situations trying to be the leader of this team and he’s been an abject failure. That is why I said “let the people you hire do their jobs”. Haslam has gotten in the way and as a result we have been a terrible franchise for the entirety of his ownership.

I do agree with you on management styles. I have people that report to me and I have weekly or bi weekly check ins with them. I find that important and valuable to both parties. I don’t use the time to micromanage but hear the updates and see if they are in line with the bigger strategy and goals we are trying to achieve. If it is, great! If it isn’t, we need to work together to redirect ourselves. I want my folks to feel they have the power to do their jobs as long as it fits within the agreed upon strategy. I just don’t trust Haslam to follow that.

 

[Lee]

I have always had a thing for her, even now when she is aging and a hot mess. I guess to keep this comment on topic, analytics has proven that I want to bang her.

 

[Lee]

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. It’s the personalities that involved that causes my reaction. Haslam has put his fingers in a lot of situations trying to be the leader of this team and he’s been an abject failure. That is why I said “let the people you hire do their jobs”. Haslam has gotten in the way and as a result we have been a terrible franchise for the entirety of his ownership.

I do agree with you on management styles. I have people that report to me and I have weekly or bi weekly check ins with them. I find that important and valuable to both parties. I don’t use the time to micromanage but hear the updates and see if they are in line with the bigger strategy and goals we are trying to achieve. If it is, great! If it isn’t, we need to work together to redirect ourselves. I want my folks to feel they have the power to do their jobs as long as it fits within the agreed upon strategy. I just don’t trust Haslam to follow that.

I think there is a bit of luck when it comes to hiring and we have been unlucky. Hue was a very good hire on paper, experience, success, well liked by players, now none of us were in the interview room and clearly Hue has zero leadership skills as a head coach, but on paper that was a good hire.

Looking back, Freddie was obviously a bad hire, jumped him up to quick and logic and analytics both should of told us that. (and did actually, we just chose to ignore them)

 

[I'mWithDan]

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. It’s the personalities that involved that causes my reaction. Haslam has put his fingers in a lot of situations trying to be the leader of this team and he’s been an abject failure. That is why I said “let the people you hire do their jobs”. Haslam has gotten in the way and as a result we have been a terrible franchise for the entirety of his ownership.

Certainly the unknown here is wether everyone in the building and everyone who will be brought in to the building wants this guy (Stefanski). Meddling can sometimes not matter from an owner if he has largely gotten out of the way to get to an environment where success is possible.

Just the stories of previous regimes have been laughably bad.....where it has seemed like no one truly knew what they wanted, other than moving on from this person or that person. I don't know if Depo has the answers but I do believe in his general vision of more collaborative work amongst executives, coaches and additive teams like analytics. Does that mean we will hire the right people? I mean, surely not but regardless of the owner.....if we actually get to that place, we have a much higher degree of success.

I honestly think a meddling owner can be mitigated if he merely stays quiet at the right times.......hopefully this was the first step in that process....where it seems like, for better or worse, people (or person) in the organization just said "Look, we have tried it your way many times and where are we?".......and this time, it appears Haslam at least listened at step 1. The challenge now will be for him to listen at step 2, 3 and 4. Do I have confidence he will? I mean who the hell knows but having the right head coach, someone who can manage personalities and voices, certainly is a good first step. Just imagining what Freddie and Haslam would talk about makes me laugh.....but I certainly can envision someone like Stefanski being able to navigate an owner having some bad instincts and guiding him through to see the light. Is that ideal? I mean, definitely not but I do believe the right personality mix is key in slowly pushing Haslam in to the shadows. Maybe we have finally gotten that.

 

[AZ_]

There's a new coach in Berea right now and I guess Cleveland media gave up on sitting outside the facility since they didn't hire God King Josh.

 

[2 For The Brew]

I think there is a bit of luck when it comes to hiring and we have been unlucky. Hue was a very good hire on paper, experience, success, well liked by players, now none of us were in the interview room and clearly Hue has zero leadership skills as a head coach, but on paper that was a good hire.

Looking back, Freddie was obviously a bad hire, jumped him up to quick and logic and analytics both should of told us that. (and did actually, we just chose to ignore them)

The overwhelming media consensus was that Hue was the best of the large group hired that year, with Chip Kelly (Niners) generally ranked 2nd. I distinctly remember listening to Philly radio hosts and callers bitching about how they missed out on Hue and ended up with a second-rate Andy Reid. Who thought Dougie P and Big Dick Nick would beat Belichick and Brady in the Super Bowl?

Freddie -- let's just forget about the past year. It's like when a team has a truly awful performance -- just destroy all video recordings of it and move on. We had to live through that poor clueless bastard's reign of incompetence for a whole season. Bad hire, worse outcome. Force yourselves to vomit all of it out and be done with it.

 

[Vee-Rex]

I'm ok with Stefanski and I'm sure his playcalling would be a huge improvement over Kitchens, but the only thing I'd be concerned with is we didn't hire him to be the play caller.

"Play-calling" is a very loose way to view the entire process.

An offensive philosophy/identity has to be established which is built on the playbook, is then followed by a weekly scheme/gameplan, and finally the actual play-calling on the field.

1. We had no offensive philosophy/identity whatsoever - no backbone/foundation to our offense. Just attempting deep seam routes over and over, mixed in with some runs with Chubb. Just a myriad of plays thrown together. Nothing to make the defense go, "Man, we gotta figure out a way to stop counter this or that style of offense."

Admittedly, Kitchens seemed to try to develop a bit of an identity when he started utilizing Chubb + Hunt together in 2RB Shotgun sets, but there was still nothing concrete there. He still did not use Baker to the best of his abilities, and this is all stuff that should have been installed during training camp.

2. He threw away the weekly gameplan/scheme. He didn't attack the weaknesses of the defenses. Where was the exploitation? He didn't utilize his players the way that he should have on a week-by-week basis. And if he did try to follow it, you'd immediately see when he would stray away from it (which is why many times our 1st drive was successful but subsequent ones were awful).

3. Play-calling obviously was awful. Don't need to touch on this more than it already has.

Kitchens failed at all 3 levels.

As of now we don't know if Stefanski will be calling the plays on gameday. We'll probably find out during his introduction conference. Regardless, I'm willing to bet that if he excels at the first 2 levels and the coaching staff works in unison (and uses analytical data), we'd be just fine even if someone else called the plays. It's not like it would be some homeless guy off the street, right?

 

[Triplethreat]

Why?

Because he’s likely to bring a bright young OC with him.

 

[Cavsfan1985]

"Play-calling" is a very loose way to view the entire process.

An offensive philosophy/identity has to be established which is built on the playbook, is then followed by a weekly scheme/gameplan, and finally the actual play-calling on the field.

1. We had no offensive philosophy/identity whatsoever - no backbone/foundation to our offense. Just attempting deep seam routes over and over, mixed in with some runs with Chubb. Just a myriad of plays thrown together. Nothing to make the defense go, "Man, we gotta figure out a way to stop counter this or that style of offense."

Admittedly, Kitchens seemed to try to develop a bit of an identity when he started utilizing Chubb + Hunt together in 2RB Shotgun sets, but there was still nothing concrete there. He still did not use Baker to the best of his abilities, and this is all stuff that should have been installed during training camp.

2. He threw away the weekly gameplan/scheme. He didn't attack the weaknesses of the defenses. Where was the exploitation? He didn't utilize his players the way that he should have on a week-by-week basis. And if he did try to follow it, you'd immediately see when he would stray away from it (which is why many times our 1st drive was successful but subsequent ones were awful).

3. Play-calling obviously was awful. Don't need to touch on this more than it already has.

Kitchens failed at all 3 levels.

As of now we don't know if Stefanski will be calling the plays on gameday. We'll probably find out during his introduction conference. Regardless, I'm willing to bet that if he excels at the first 2 levels and the coaching staff works in unison (and uses analytical data), we'd be just fine even if someone else called the plays. It's not like it would be some homeless guy off the street, right?

This is spot on. It’s not all about the play calling, it is about the system and what is being done in week leading up to the game. This is why the good coaches can make good second have adjustments as they can make tweaks in the play calling at halftime based on the defense but still have a team be on the same page.

 

[Binkster]

I was curious (and unproductive at work) this Monday morning so I decided to compare Sean McVay's offense in his final year in Washington (prior to his hire in LA) vs. Stefanski. Why? Well, I'm bored. But also because they seemed to have a similar rise and also had Kirk Cousins at QB on their respective teams.

Coach	Yards (Rank)	Points (Rank)	Rush Yards (Rank)	# Rush Attempts (Rank)	Pass Yards (Rank)	# Pass Attempts (Rank)	Pass TD (Rank)	INTs
McVay (2016)	6454 (3)	390 (12)	1696 (21)	379 (27)	4758 (2)	607 (7)	25 (14)	14
Stefanski (2019)	5656 (16)	389 (7)	2133 (6)	476 (4)	3523 (23)	466 (30)	26 (14)	5

I found it interesting how run-heavy Stefanski went vs. McVay. Obviously having Dalvin Cook helps. But I do think there's something to be said for the correlation between taking the ball out of Cousins' hands and their scoring output.

Weirdly enough, Minnesota had 141 fewer pass attempts than Washington yet had more passing touchdowns and almost identical total points. Also, fewer passing attempts = fewer INTs (obviously).

Draw whatever conclusions you want from this. Most of it is surface level. But I do think there was some intricate strategy at play that drove the decision-making employed by Stefanski/Kubiak in 2019.

 

[Huber.]

Because he’s likely to bring a bright young OC with him.

Dude is 37.