AN  E-SPECIAL-LY GOOD MOVE BY STEFANSKI

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By STEVE KING

Sam Rutigliano told me a story about building his staff when he was hired as head coach of the Browns in 1978.

He said he wanted to bring in mostly his own assistants he knew from his previous coaching stops in both the NFL and college. But he also wanted to interview the assistants from former head coach Forrest Gregg’s 1977 staff to see if there were any who could fit in with his staff. And when he did, he found several he decided to keep, including offensive line coach Rod Humeniuk, who ended up doing a great job for the Kardiac Kids.

“Most new coaches take a big broom when they get hired and sweep out all the coaches they inherit,” Rutigliano said. “But I thought that was crazy. You’re much better off to look at who you’re getting, because there just might be someone there you could use.”

I’ve never forgotten that, and I thought about it recently in hearing that new Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski decided to keep three members of former head coach Freddie Kitchens’ staff, including special teams coordinator Mike Priefer.

That’s a great move by Stefanski – an incredibly great move.

For over a decade before Priefer arrived, the Browns had one of the worst special teams in the league, if not THE absolute worst. The players were coached badly, and they performed badly. The Browns had terrible teams overall, and contributing to it – greatly – were these horrible special teams.

But that changed – dramatically so – under Priefer. The special teams units weren’t terrible anymore. They were actually — gulp — good, which was hard to believe.

So it would have been a poor decision by Stefanski to just fire Priefer out of hand without first evaluating him, and his coaching job. The Browns are already better by retaining Priefer.

Let’s hope Stefanski keeps making good moves like that.

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