Within the confines of the Cleveland Browns stadium and the team’s CrossCountry Mortgage Facility in Berea, head coach Kevin Stefanski enjoys the full support of the team, regardless of the opinions of the fan base.
Not convinced? You need look no farther than Juan Thornhill, a safety and one of the newest players on the Browns.
With a calf injury that kept him out of the game minutes before the Cleveland Browns took on the Jacksonville Jaguars, Thornhill was forced to watch the team’s 31-28 victory from the sidelines. The Super Bowl champion expressed his support for Stefanski on X a few hours after the game.
From an objective standpoint, considering the staggering amount of injuries his team has endured, Stefanski has done a pretty amazing job of keeping them on course.
The injury epidemic started Week One when the team watched starting right tackle Jack Conklin go down with a season-ending knee injury. One week later, the same thing happened to star running back Nick Chubb. Cleveland played four different quarterbacks this season before losing starting quarterback Deshaun Watson.
Starting left tackle Jedrick Wills is currently on injured reserve, and right tackle Dawand Jones has been in and out of the lineup this season due to a knee injury that he sustained in Week 14. It is practically hard to establish any kind of regular rhythm because of the players’ frequent substitutions, but the Browns are 8-5 and guaranteed a spot in the playoffs if the season ends today, defying all expectations.
Thronhill isn’t the only member of the defense lining up to sign Stefanski’s praises. Star pass rusher Myles Garrett expressed similar sentiments regarding his head coach during his postgame press conference.
He has done an incredible job, and we have answered the call, considering everything that has changed over the course of the year—pieces coming in and going out, switching around—” Grrett remarked.
In order to make up for some of the injuries, he has placed us in different positions with different calls and schemes that we are attempting to adjust to. However, this goes hand in hand with our attempts to play off of the situations that we are placed in, as he is coaching his ass off and placing us in many advantageous positions.
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The proof is in the pudding. There’s been a lot more good than bad from the Browns head man. He has this team believing, against all odds, that they can win any game, regardless of the quarterback in the starting lineup or whose most recent injury has compromised one aspect of the game more than the other.
Without him, we can not even imagine where Cleveland would be this season.
