The Cleveland Browns finally found their new head coach. Kevin Stefanski is the new head man. If you don’t know who he is, Stefanski is the guy who finished 2nd to Freddie Kitchens for the Browns head job last year. That sounds like promising news. Does it really matter who the Browns hire? This is an organization that fired Bill Belichick. The question here is does anybody actually know if Kevin Stefanski knows what he’s doing?
I’m not a fan of Bill Simmons but I thought this tweet was perfect.
The Vikings got pummeled by San Francisco but I think the 49ers are winning it. Minnesota did beat New Orleans in the first round and Kirk Cousins (Say what you want) actually performed well at times this year. I think we’re asking the wrong question though. Stefanski has been the offensive coordinator for two years. One of those he was sort of on his own. The second being helped with a watchful eye of Gary Kubiak.
Let’s examine each player with and without the help of Kubiak. 2019 being the year Kubiak joined the Vikings staff as a consultant.
2018 Kirk Cousins: 70.1 percent, 5% TD Percentage, 1.7% INT percentage, 7.1 YPA, 99.7 rating
2019 Kirk Cousins: 69.1 percent, 5.9% TD percentage, 1.4 INT percentage, 8.1 YPA, 107.4
There is no question Cousins was better this year. Cousins went 10-5 and won a playoff game. The year before, Minnesota was 8-7-1. No question that the offense was better.
Dalvin Cook was one of the best running backs in the NFL until he got hurt. Despite having a shaky offensive line, his YPC average was 4.5. A very respectable mark. Now Cook wasn’t there much a year ago so I can’t compare other backs. Minnesota had the 8th highest scoring offense in 2019 and 19th scoring offense the year before.
What I worry about here is how much of this is Kubiak and how much of this is Stefanski. Are we giving the wrong guy credit? I’m not in the Vikings building. It’s impossible for me to say how smart or not smart Stefanski is. Here’s what we do know. The Browns hired him. Probably not a great move on either side because… it’s the Browns.
