Browns fire head coach Kevin Stefanski after 6 seasons

THE ATHLETIC VIA THE NEW YORK TIMES

Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski in an undated photo.

The Cleveland Browns have fired head coach Kevin Stefanski after six seasons, the team announced this morning. Andrew Berry will retain his job as the team’s general manager.

Stefanski was named NFL Coach of the Year in 2020 and 2023, the Browns’ last two playoff seasons. The 2023 Browns won 11 games while starting five different quarterbacks. Ultimately, though, the lack of any real answer at quarterback in the wake of the Browns’ 2022 Deshaun Watson trade and three unremarkable seasons by Watson led to Stefanski’s ouster.

“We have tremendous gratitude for Kevin’s leadership of the Cleveland Browns over the last six seasons,” team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam said in a statement. “He is a good football coach and an even better person. We appreciate all his hard work and dedication to our organization, but our results over the last two seasons have not been satisfactory, and we believe a change at the head-coaching position is necessary.

“We wish Kevin, Michelle and the Stefanski family all the best in the future. Andrew Berry will continue to lead our football operations. The entirety of our focus is on building a team that brings our fans the success they long deserve, and we will continue to work relentlessly toward that goal and invest whatever resources necessary to build a winning football program. Andrew will immediately begin our thorough process to find an outstanding new head coach and leader of our football team. We have an exciting young core to build upon, and Andrew and his team are intent on adding talent to this core and building out a roster that can achieve sustainable success.”

The 2025 Browns had six quarterbacks on their 90-man training camp roster and pulled the plug on veteran starter Joe Flacco after four games. Overmatched rookie quarterback Dillon Gabriel was up next, but could not produce enough in the pass game to complement the Browns’ strong defense.

While Shedeur Sanders showed flashes while starting the final seven games of his rookie year, the Browns ranked at or near the bottom of the league in every significant offensive category for the second straight season. They followed the 2023 playoff season by winning just eight total games over the last two years.

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Stefanski’s cumulative regular-season record was 45-56.

The Browns hired Stefanski in January 2020 and hired Berry a few weeks later. Paul DePodesta, the Browns’ chief strategy officer who was generally credited with identifying Stefanski as a strong head-coaching candidate, left the organization in early November to head MLB’s Colorado Rockies. DePodesta’s exit, combined with mounting losses, set the stage for Stefanski’s eventual firing, though failures on offense and special teams over the last two years left the feeling that the 2025 season would likely be Stefanski’s last.

This season, the Browns were 31st in scoring, 31st in yards per game and 30th in giveaways. The 2024 Browns were last in scoring, 28th in yards per game and tied for 31st in giveaways.

The construction of the offense was poor, even outside of the quarterback carousel. The Browns in 2025 had eight different starting offensive line combinations and four different left tackles. The wide receiver group was inarguably one of the league’s worst, but team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam appear to be content letting Stefanski take the fall.

Despite the 11-win playoff season in 2023, the Browns immediately made significant offensive staff changes designed to tailor to Watson’s supposed strengths, and Stefanski was forced to fire his first offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt, ahead of the 2024 season. But new coordinator Ken Dorsey lasted just one season, and offensive line coach Andy Dickerson had many of his duties taken away at midseason before he, too, was fired in the wake of a 3-14 season in 2024.

In early 2025, Tommy Rees was promoted from tight ends coach to offensive coordinator, but Stefanski announced that he would call the plays to start the season.

In both 2024 and 2025, Stefanski gave up play-calling duties around midseason. In both cases, Stefanski said publicly that the decision was his own.

After a 1-3 start in 2025, the Browns benched Flacco for Gabriel and then traded Flacco a week later to Cincinnati. After Gabriel left the game against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 11 with a concussion, Sanders entered in the second half and maintained the starting job. He rode the defense to a win over the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 12, and then became the first rookie quarterback in Browns franchise history to throw for 300-plus yards, three touchdown passes and rush for another score in a loss to the Tennessee Titans in Week 14.

Sanders got no reps with the No. 1 offense in training camp or the preseason and had continued to get only reps with backups and in post-practice opportunity periods despite becoming the team’s No. 2 quarterback in the wake of the Flacco trade. Despite some nice moments over his first few starts, Sanders struggled behind a shaky offensive line and put too many passes in harm’s way over the final month of the season.

With Watson still under contract for 2026 at a current salary-cap number of more than $80 million, the Browns go forward with no clear answer at quarterback. The new head coach will likely have almost an entirely new offensive line, in addition to facing major decisions about how to remake and approach the quarterback and wide receiver depth charts.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

© 2026 The New York Times Company

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