The Cleveland Browns have finally parted ways with head coach Kevin Stefanski. He will leave Northeast Ohio with a 45-56 record after six seasons.
Stefanski’s dismissal wasn’t much of a surprise. For weeks, the expectation was that the regular-season finale vs. the Cincinnati Bengals would be his last in charge of the team. Team owner Jimmy Haslam was also quite supportive of Stefanski.
With that in mind, he shared a lengthy statement about his dismissal:
“We have tremendous gratitude for Kevin’s leadership of the Cleveland Browns over the last six seasons,” Managing and Principal Partners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said in a statement. “He is a good football coach and an even better person. We appreciate all his hard work and dedication to our organization but our results over the last two seasons have not been satisfactory, and we believe a change at the head coaching position is necessary. We wish Kevin, Michelle and the Stefanski family all the best in the future. Andrew Berry will continue to lead our football operations. The entirety of our focus is on building a team that brings our fans the success they long deserve, and we will continue to work relentlessly towards that goal and invest whatever resources necessary to build a winning football program. Andrew will immediately begin our thorough process to find an outstanding new head coach and leader of our football team. We have an exciting young core to build upon, and Andrew and his team are intent on adding talent to this core and building out a roster that can achieve sustainable success.”
Statement from #Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam on the firing of Kevin Stefanski: pic.twitter.com/Abv9wWPMkR
— Camryn Justice (@camijustice) January 5, 2026
Blaming Stefanski for all the things that went wrong during his tenure would be as inaccurate as unfair. He was dealt a terrible hand, and GM Andrew Berry should probably get most of the blame for that.
That being said, even as a two-time Coach of the Year and after leading the ever-struggling Browns to a couple of postseason berths, the writing was already on the wall for the team to move on from Stefanski. There was just no way to keep him around after winning a combined eight games in the past two seasons.
The Browns’ offense never really took off. Stefanski’s reputation as an offensive guru will probably help him land on his feet and get another job right away, but his play-calling and scheming never translated into success in Berea. Under his guidance, the team only had one season with a top-10 offense.
Whether he’s a good coach or not might not even be a debate at this point. It was irrelevant. Numbers didn’t lie, and he had seemed to lose his grasp on the locker room and with the local media.
Politics is a part of the job, and Stefanski didn’t do well in that regard. Some even thought that he might actually be relieved after being shown the door. Now, the Browns will have to be extremely careful with their next hire.
They have a myriad of young talent to build around, but they clearly still don’t have a franchise-caliber quarterback on the team.
NEXT: Breaking: Browns Are Moving On From Kevin Stefanski
