The Cleveland Browns are a complete and absolute dumpster fire. But is that news to anyone?

This organization is completely inept. Even when things seem like they’re trending upward, it all comes crashing back down. I know everyone jokes around, saying the Browns are cursed, but I’m actually starting to believe it, because the odds of being this bad for this long are longer than winning the lottery.

On Wednesday, the Browns announced they are hiring Todd Monken as their next head coach. I think this is a terrible move for the Browns, and he probably won’t last more than two or three years, but did they even have another option? Yes, they did.

In fact, their best option was to never fire their two-time Coach of the Year in the first place.

They Never Should Have Fired Kevin Stefanski

The two hardest things in football to nail are the head coach and the quarterback. The Browns nailed their head coach with Kevin Stefanski, but they were still lacking in the quarterback department. Instead of retaining their head coach and trying to find a replacement at quarterback, they decided to fire their head coach, forcing them to replace the two most important people to a team.

Stefanski was a two-time Coach of the Year and brought the Browns to the playoffs for the first time in 17 years back in 2020.

He also won the Browns their first playoff game since 1994 and then brought Cleveland back to the postseason with Joe Flacco, Deshaun Watson, PJ Walker, and Dorian Thompson-Robinson as his starting quarterbacks. Sure, he and the Browns didn’t have success the last two seasons, but that was due to no fault of his own.

Stefanski was given an offense that was completely and utterly awful. In 2024, Stefanski was forced to start Jameis Winston and Deshaun Watson for most of the season. Everyone loves Winston, but we can all agree he isn’t a starting quarterback in the NFL. He just makes too many mistakes.

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Then, in 2025, the situation got even worse. After the Browns’ GM traded Joe Flacco to Cincinnati, Stefanski was forced to start Dillon Gabriel, who actually wasn’t awful, but he played far too safely.

After Gabriel got hurt, Shedeur Sanders came in and logged an 18.9 QBR, which ranks 692nd out of 698 qualified quarterbacks since 2006. On top of that, the Browns’ only viable weapon was a rookie tight end. You can only ask so much of a coach. He’s not out there making plays.

Over the last two seasons, Stefanski has worked with the three quarterbacks with the worst EPA per dropback. Dillon Gabriel, Shedeur Sanders, and Deshaun Watson rank 52nd, 53rd, and 54th, respectively, in that category out of 54 qualified quarterbacks.

This was not a Stefanski issue. It was a front office issue. They failed to provide him with the players he needed to make the playoffs. He proved multiple times that he could do it with the right situation, but Cleveland completely failed him and then fired the best asset to their team.

Todd Monken Was a Bad Hire, but Did They Have Another Choice?

I don’t believe Todd Monken is the right fit for Cleveland. He’s had some good years as an offensive coordinator, but a lot of that success was because of a man named Lamar Jackson. And you know what the Browns don’t have? A Lamar Jackson-level quarterback. But did the Browns really have another choice?

The Browns interviewed a healthy crop of candidates, including Jesse Minter, Mike McDaniel, and some others. But once Minter took the Baltimore job and McDaniel dropped out for an offensive coordinator job in LA, it became clear that Cleveland was going to have to settle for a bottom-tier candidate.

Cleveland was one of the first jobs to open up, and they still couldn’t secure even one interview with most of the top candidates in this head coaching cycle.

Guys like Robert Saleh, John Harbaugh, Mike McCarthy, Brian Flores, Klint Kubiak, and plenty of others didn’t even bother to interview for the job. There are some guys out there who would rather be a coordinator than the Browns’ head coach.

That’s how bad it is.

The Browns are just in a horrible spot. They don’t have a quarterback (they’re paying eight of them, by the way), they’re $18 million in the red, and their supporting cast on offense is the worst in the entire league. They have a solid defense, but why would anyone want to go be the head coach there knowing they’re probably going to be fired in three years?

They’re a complete dumpster fire, and we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.

The Jim Schwartz Saga

One of the main obstacles for the Browns was Jim Schwartz. Cleveland wanted to hire a head coach who would keep Schwartz as defensive coordinator, but most of their top candidates, including Nathan Scheelhaase, couldn’t promise that.

So, instead of hiring Scheelhaase (and for my own sake, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about spelling his last name for at least another year), the Browns hired Monken, who was fine with keeping Schwartz around.

Well, Schwartz got word that he was not going to be the next head coach of the Cleveland Browns and basically said, “Screw you, I’m out.” He is reportedly done in Cleveland, even though he’s still under contract with the team.

I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. Only in Cleveland would this kind of thing happen. They piss off all their prospective candidates because they wouldn’t allow them to bring in their own coaching staff, so they go with the one guy who agreed to keep their defensive coordinator around, and he dips anyway.

In my mind, it’s no debate. The Cleveland Browns are the worst-run organization in any of the major sports. If you’d like to make a case for a worse dumpster fire, I’m all ears.