Josh McDaniels wasn’t the man for the Cleveland Browns, who reportedly decided Sunday to hire Kevin Stefanski as their next head coach.
And according to multiple reports, the Browns weren’t the team for McDaniels, either.
McDaniels, who has served as the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator for each of the last eight seasons and 12 of the last 15, reportedly was unwilling to accept some of the unconventional requirements put in place by Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and chief strategist Paul DePodesta.
These included “an analytics person with a headset and access to the coaching staff on game days (and) hours-long, Monday-after, owner-coach meetings,” according to Steve Doerschuk of McDaniels’ hometown Canton Rep, as well as a mandate to turn in each week’s game plan to Cleveland’s analytics department, per Dustin Fox, a Cleveland radio host and ESPN college football analyst.
Was also told candidates also had to agree to turn in game plans to the owner and analytics department by Friday, and to attend an end-of-week analytics meeting to discuss their plan. https://t.co/rDqltnucRj
— Dustin Fox (@DustinFox37) January 13, 2020
McDaniels, an Ohio native who reportedly showed great interest in the Browns job last offseason, recommended a “sweeping makeover” of the Browns’ organizational structure, per reports from Doerschuk and The MMQB’s Albert Breer. Haslam and DePodesta disagreed, and McDaniels left Cleveland without a job offer.
“In the end, both came to a similar conclusion: It wasn’t a great fit,” Doerschuk wrote Sunday. “The Browns want to hang on to some of the ideas they still think can work. McDaniels had quite different ideas.”
The Browns have not won a playoff game since the revival of the franchise in 1999 and have not finished above .500 since 2007. They went 6-10 this season and subsequently fired first-year head coach Freddie Kitchens.
