Brad Childress on his protege and new Browns coach Kevin Stefanski: ‘He’s ready to go; he’s seen about everything’

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Kevin Stefanski’s mentor Brad Childress, the former Browns offensive coordinator and Vikings head coach, was on his way into church Sunday afternoon when he heard that Stefanski had gotten the Browns head coaching job.

He figured the man upstairs would forgive him for being a little late, so he sat in the parking lot for a minute to text his longtime friend and colleague, whom he hired in 2006 as a recent Penn grad to be his personal assistant when he got the Vikings head coach job.

No sooner did he pull up Stefanski’s contact than the phone started to buzz.

“I go ‘Kevin?' " Childress, the Browns OC in 2012 told cleveland.com in a phone interview Monday. “‘He goes, ‘Yes, what have I gotten myself into?’ I said ‘You’re about find out. It’s a whole new world.’ I said ‘You should know as well as anybody. You were seat-by-seat with me when we started at the Vikings.’’’

Childress, a senior offensive assistant to the Bears’ Matt Nagy in 2019 who’s already told Nagy he won’t be back in 2020, first noticed Stefanski when he was an Eagles training camp intern at Lehigh University while in college at Penn in the early 2000s. Childress was offensive coordinator under Andy Reid at the time, and Stefanski, the Browns’ 18th full-time head coach, was a safety at Penn.

“He was very kind of clued in as to how things work,’’ said Childress. “He was a hard worker, and you knew he was a football guy. He was a captain at Penn, which is a big deal. I liked the way he carried himself.’’

Childress made a mental note that when he became a head coach, he’d hire Stefanski as his right-hand man and administrative assistant. He also liked that the young man had grown up around professional sports, with his dad Ed Stefanski being a longtime NBA executive with the Grizzlies, Raptors, 76ers and Nets, and Pistons, where he’s currently a senior adviser to owner Tom Gores.

“I knew he wouldn’t be big-eyed in the face of ‘I’ve gotta go hand Randy Moss a slip that he’s gotta sign because I’m fining him for something,’’ Childress said.

In 2006, fresh out of college, where he was Penn’s Defensive Player of the Year as a rookie in 2000, and one year as the team’s assistant director of football operations, Stefanski kept the trains running on time for the meticulously organized Childress.

“That role sitting outside the head coach’s office, you’re not only a gatekeeper, but you’re doing everything from football to talking to the owners to talking to the GM to talking to the salary cap guy,’’ Childress said. “You’re intervening with the offensive and defensive staffs, and he had an aptitude for all of that. None of that was too big for him. He was authoritative. People listened to him when he talked and he knew what he was talking about more than anything.’’

Stefanski watched Childress navigate the Vikings through some of their tumultuous times during his tenure as head coach from 2006-2010, when he went 40-37, including 1-2 in the playoffs.

“There’s not much that’s going to ruffle him, because he’s seen about everything from us coming in there on the tails of the Love Boat to Randy Moss walking out the door,’’ Childress said.

In 2009, after three years as Childress’ shadow, Stefanski was promoted to assistant quarterbacks coach, where he dealt with the larger-than-life Brett Favre. Favre guided the Vikings to a 12-4 record that year and a berth in the NFC Championship Game, where they lost to the Saints. They scored 29.4 points per game that year, second-most in the league.

“The moment wasn’t too big for [Stefanski],’’ said Childress. “He was smart and he knew what he was talking about. Brett liked him and knew he’d be a good football coach.’’

Childress followed Reid’s model, grooming his young assistants to start from the ground up on the personnel or football side and learn every aspect of the business. It’s the way current head coaches such as Buffalo’s Sean McDermott, Philadelphia’s Doug Pederson and Nagy were brought up under Reid.

“Jon Gruden’s famous quote is, ‘Unless you’ve been a quality-control coach in this league and drawing pictures, you don’t understand everything that goes on,’ ’’ said Childress. “He’s been bottom-up. He’s been all the way at the bottom in a couple different instance and worked himself right to the top.’’

Stefanski, who’s survived two coaching changes, from Childress to Leslie Frazier and then Mike Zimmer, has also learned different offenses from coordinators such as Norv Turner, who ran the numbers or three-digit system, to Pat Shurmur, who ran a version Reid’s West Coast system with his own spin.

“There’s not a lot of guys that have been exposed to and had to learn both,’’ said Childress. “And then Pat Shurmur comes in and kind of builds on that so he’s really got a wide breadth of offense if you will. I’m sure he’s heard of a ton of different ways to do it. And then when you put together the fact that he’s not just a quarterback guy, he’s coached runners, he’s coached tight ends, quarterbacks you don’t find a lot of guys that coached most of the positions. He’s got a lot of stuff going for him.’’

Childress said it says a lot about Stefanski that Zimmer retained him and blocked him from going to New York with Shurmur as Giants coordinator in 2018.

“Mike Zimmer’s a notorious tough guy, takes him and doesn’t throw him out and won’t let him go with Pat Shurmur,’’ said Childress. “He says, ‘I just don’t want to let good coaches leave the building.' He just wouldn’t let him go. In hindsight it’s the best thing that ever happened or he’d be looking for work right now. But I just think he’s ready to go. He’s got an even keel about him.’’

Here’s more from Childress on Stefanski and his new role:

Why are you confident he’ll excel at this?

“He’s a great communicator and I know he’ll sit back and take time to evaluate what personnel is there and what’s not there. He’ll figure out ‘what we can do well’ and he won’t try to throw the whole ‘everything I’ve learned’ at them all at once. I think it will be a systematic approach to installation.

“Nobody’s going to be more organized. There’s not going to be more schedules around the building where you can’t say ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to be there.’ Because it’s going to be there and it’s going to be there at 10 o’clock the night before, you’ve got to be there the next morning. He has all the abilities to be able to do that and then lead those guys to a common vision.’’

Can he call plays his first year as head coach?

“Yeah, I think he could because the thing is, nobody’s going to know what he’s putting in and it’s not going to fall off anybody’s lips any faster than it’s going to fall off Kevin’s. He’s the guy that’s going to know the language better than anybody and who knows whether he evolves to have somebody else doing it he wants to do it himself. I think he has a good feel for it.’’

Will he be able to get Baker Mayfield back on track after he tumbled to second-last in the NFL with a 78.8 rating?

“If he’s going to do the things that made Kirk Cousins successful the last year or two and embraces that outside zone, one-cut running scheme, yeah. I remember [the Browns] getting ready to play the Washington Redskins (in 2012), and [Robert Griffin III] was out so we were going to play against the No. 2 guy Kirk Cousins and I’m thinking to myself, ‘We’ve got a great chance to win this game.’

“And all I remember is him naked-bootlegging back and forth across the field and throwing it all over town (in a 38-21 Browns loss). I’m like ‘holy crap! That’s their No. 2 and he’s a rookie.’ With that said about Baker, yeah, if he can buy into the principles Kevin espouses then he’s going to be in great shape and I’m sure there will be some give and take with ‘do you like this play, do you not like this play.’

"There’s no sense in putting a round peg in a square hole. If they don’t like it, they don’t like it. [Roll him out] just so the defense can’t find you in the same spot every time and obviously it all starts up front with being able to exert your will and being able to run the ball. That’s kind of the common thread and the common trend.’’

Would he return as his senior offensive assistant?

“I haven’t been asked yet,’’ he said. “That’s not out of the question, but I doubt it pretty much. I think he’s got his eye on some people that he has an interest in.’’

What makes his offense so QB-friendly?

“Because he’s always got an answer, a place to go with the ball in an emergency. It’s quarterback-friendly because he’s coached quarterbacks and quarterbacks are a different kind of fish whether you’re talking about Favre, you’re talking about Cousins, you’re talking about Sam Bradford who he had. There’s a whole ball of quarterbacks, guys that can move, guys that can’t move, he can figure it out for all of those guys and make them be successful.’’

Will he be able to handle the strong personalities of Mayfield, Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry?

“I’m sure Baker can be a little bit different. Those guys are usually high strung. But it’s nothing that you’re not going to be able to communicate. If he wants them to dress a certain way at practice that’s going to go sideline to sideline and you’re not going to be able to defeat that. It’s just going to be the way it is.

“As for the receivers, everybody’s aware there’s only one ball to go around, but those guys at the Vikings have had a lot of success catching deep balls, running behind people because you have to defend the run, and you’ve got a pretty good runner there from what I understand.

“And all of those guys will have a piece of the action. The runners, the quarterbacks, the wide receivers should be able to get plenty. I mean, it’s a tight-end friendly offense as well, so everything from the wide receiver screens to the deep over-the-top throws.’’

What kind of guy is he?

“He’s got a good sense of humor. He can laugh at himself. Having been around him his whole life, there’s not a whole lot that flummoxes him. He can roll with the punches and he’s smart enough to absorb and take in the good and spit out the bad and say ‘okay here we go, we’re going forward.' I think he’ll be matter-of-fact. He won’t be domineering but he’ll be demanding of what those guys do.’’

Will he up for the intense media scrutiny?

“Being a Philly guy, yes, he gets it.’’

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