What is it about running the football that Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski does not like?

He passed the ball when he should’ve run it against the Seattle Seahawks and it turned the game around in a 24-20 Browns loss back on Oct. 29.

And now, too months later, he decided to call some razzle-dazzle play instead of running the football, and it turned the game around in Sunday’s 29–12 road loss to the Denver Broncos.

A coach, especially a playcaller such as Stefanski, who calls all the offensive plays, has to have a feel for the game. He has to understand the flow of the gamei. That allows him to make the right call.

But Stefanski must not understand that with the Cleveland offense. His silly play call had to start of the fourth quarter resulted in a Browns fumble with the team trailing only 17–12. The Broncos used the turnover to score a touchdown to push the lead to 24–12, and the Browns never recovered.

It’s hard enough to win in this league, and it’s even harder to win on the road, especially in a tough place like Denver. To make the kind of mistakes that Stefanski commited just made that effort just that much more difficult.

You could say that Stefanski is the reason why the Browns lost these two games, and you would be right.

At a speaking engagement in Canton a week ago, former Browns great Joshua Cribbs said that Stefanski is a much better head coach than he is a play collar. He is absolutely right.

It’s just that Stefanski doesn’t understand that.

And that is a big problem for the Browns

Steve King