Browns QB Deshaun Watson press conference
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Coach Kevin Stefanski expects Deshaun Watson to participate fully in the Browns offseason program beginning April 18, and vows to play to his strengths.
“I do expect Deshaun to be there April 19th with everybody else,’’ Stefanski said at the NFL Annual meeting coaches breakfast Monday morning. “And you know, I haven’t had an offseason yet with players. Year One was COVID; Year Two as you know was a little bit different. So looking forward to having a normal offseason.’’
Stefanski acknowledged the importance of the players working together with a new quarterback and a new No. 1 receiver in four-time Pro Bowler Amari Cooper.
“It’s a voluntary program as we all know,’’ he said. “[But] I think there’s great value in being around your teammates and around your coaches in Berea, and Deshaun will be a part of that.’’
Of course, the Browns are bracing themselves for Watson to be suspended by the NFL under terms of its Personal Conduct Policy in connection with 22 civil lawsuits by massage therapists accusing him of sexual misconduct, but Stefanski says he has no clarification on when that might happen.
He noted that Watson, 26, has been well received by his new Browns teammates despite his off-the-field issues. The first night he was in town, he spent time with cornerback Greg Newsome II and linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, and linebacker Anthony Walker willingly gave up his No. 4 jersey to Watson.
“I haven’t been able to talk to a lot of guys, just because we’re not together yet,’’ Stefanski said. “But certainly text messages and making sure they have his contact information, they can start to reach out to each other. But as you can imagine, our guys are very welcoming.’’
Stefanski said he’ll try to see to it that Watson’s off-the-field issues don’t become a distraction to the team, while also fully understanding that it will be brought up to Watson and others in the organization while it plays out in the legal system.
“I think that’s important for our players, coaches and our building in general,’’ Stefanski said. “We understand that there are questions, and we’re going to continue to have that dialogue. But at the end of the day, we also have our work to do. We have to focus on that. That’s something we always talk about with our players. When you’re in the building and you’re working in the weight room, you’re in the meeting room or you’re on the field, you have to be present and be where your feet are. That will really be our approach to everything.”
He was prepared for the enormity of the backlash the club has received from fans and women’s groups, including the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center.
“I’ve tried, we’ve tried to be so understanding of everybody’s viewpoint on this because it’s really, really, really important,’’ he said. “I want to just make sure that I’m available in our building to everyone to talk through because it’s not something that was taken lightly. It’s just too important.
“I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that this is something that took weeks, months, weeks of gathering information, of discussions and conversations. It’s not something we could take lightly.”
He declined to say which female members of the organization he spoke to before signing off on the Watson trade.
“Respectfully, I’m not going to tell you everyone that we talked to and what was said,’’ he said. “I will tell you that we worked very hard to talk to as many people as we could about this because it’s important. We want people to be involved, and I wanted to do way more listening than talking in those discussions and understand where everybody was. It’s hard and complicated and not easy, but I think it was my job and our job to listen. It’s my job to continue to listen and continue to have that dialogue with all of our staff, particularly our women.’’
He acknowledged he discussed it with his father, Ed Stefanski, a former NBA player, longtime NBA personnel exec, and current senior advisor for the Detroit Pistons.
“My dad offers a lot of free advice,’’ he said. “Certainly, I do bounce things off of him, bring him in and try and get his perspective on a lot of things. Probably not enough for his liking. He’s somebody that can give me a lot of perspective from his experience in similar situations.’’
He noted that he personally asked Watson, a three-time Pro Bowler, some tough questions when they met with him in Houston March 15.
“I don’t want to get too specific, but we understand how important that decision is from our organization’s standpoint,’’ he said. “So you want to have all the information that you can, including speaking to Deshaun finally face to face.”
As far as GM Andrew Berry stating that the Watson due diligence has been a “five-month odyssey,” Stefanski indicated he hasn’t been involved in it that long.
“How far back is five months?” Stefanski asked, only to be quickly informed it was November. “Yeah, so for me, I mean, until we’re out of the season, I don’t really get involved in those type of things.
“Obviously, once the season’s unfolded, then we start talking about our plan moving forward. That’s when I get looped in. But I was trying to get a first down back then.”
Stefanski vowed to play to Watson’s dual-threat capabilities and other strengths, even if it means playing more three-receiver sets and running the ball less.
“It remains to be seen and I do think that’s our job as coaches year-in and year-out as your roster evolves,’’ he said. “You better evolve if you have different running backs, different wide receivers, but certainly when you’re talking about the quarterback position, you better do what that player does best. And that’s what we want to do, ultimately.
“I had a lot of really good conversations with Deshaun from a football perspective with the coaches and I think we have a good plan moving forward. But that’ll be an evolution. I mean that that’ll be an evolution over the weeks, months.’’
A disciple of many different offensive coordinators, Stefanski said he won’t necessarily scrap the Gary Kubiak version of the West Coast offense he’s been running for the past three seasons, with a heavy emphasis on play-action, bootlegs, a wide-zone running scheme and multiple tight ends.
“You know, it’s funny, you can call it whatever you want,’’ he said. “Ultimately we want to run the 2022 Cleveland Browns offense, and whatever elements that has in it, we hope that we have enough in our offense where we can pivot, week to week to certain elements. But to say that we’re going to wholesale change everything, we’ll see.’’
He still has a penchant for tight ends and the mismatches they create, even though the Browns terminated the contract of two-time Pro Bowler Austin Hooper.
“You can never have enough,’’ Stefanski said. “First of all, I think Austin Hooper is a good football player and I think Tennessee got a good player. For us, it comes down to getting through free agency, getting through the draft, see who we have on the roster and then plan accordingly. If we don’t add another tight end, so to speak, are we going to pivot more to 12 personnel (two tight ends), 11 personnel (three receivers) It’s just basically who we have.”
With Watson playing so much out of the shotgun, will the Browns have to make major adjustments?
“It’s something that we’ve already started looking at and working as a staff on,’’ Stefanski said. “There’s probably more similarities than differences (in what they both do). It’s just a matter of maybe frequency and volume, if you will. So there’s some things that Deshaun has done in his career that we have done last couple years, and there’s a few other things that maybe we haven’t featured that we want to do more of now that Deshaun is our quarterback and really match what we’re doing to his skill set.’’
Despite Watson playing an entirely different style than Baker Mayfield, Stefanski is confident he’s got the right staff in place to help Watson excel. It includes offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and quarterbacks coach Drew Petzing, who tutored tight ends the past two years.
“If you go across our staff, you’d find quite a bit of No. 1, experience in years, but different systems,” Stefanski said. “Guys have been brought up doing a bunch of different things. So philosophically, we have some great debates in there because guys have some experience that they can draw on from five, 10, even 20 years ago.”
In terms of him calling plays for Watson, he feels up to the task and reiterated recently that he’ll retain those duties.
“So much of that is the relationship between the play caller and the quarterback and making sure that you’re aligned and seeing the game similarly, and that’s where we just have to get to work,’’ Stefanski said. “When the guys are back in in April, we have a lot of ground to cover. And I know that he’ll put in the work to do that.”
With Mayfield publicly criticizing the playcalling on two occasions after games last season, Stefanski understands the importance of communicating with his QB.
“It’s really important that the quarterback knows where you’re going as a play caller, why that play is being called,’’ he said. “That just comes from meetings and being around each other and practices. So that’s something we can’t just skip any steps to get there. You have to work at that in the meeting room and on the practice field.’’
Stefanski believes Watson is happy with what he has to work with, even though the Browns will likely add another starting receiver and possibly bring Jarvis Landry back.
“We like having young players in there as well,” Stefanski said. “As you know, our young players are very intelligent and on their ways to being good pros. I think it’s good to have a mix of young and old but I really like the young guys we have in there.’’
If Watson plays most of this season, Stefanski can rest assured he has a QB who can compete with the best in the AFC North, and the NFL in general.
“It’s an important position,’’ he said. “There’s some great ones in this league. You look at the playoffs and how they unfolded this season. We’re certainly excited about adding Deshaun to the group, but looking across the landscape of this league, there’s some great quarterbacks out there.’’
Stefanski began his head coaching career at the beginning of the pandemic, and had a tumultuous second season with Mayfield and the abrupt departure of Odell Beckham Jr. Now, he must navigate the turbulent waters of the Watson acquisition.
“You can’t predict the NFL,’’ Stefanski said. “Nobody can. That’s why it’s such a great cadence and it’s why we all enjoy it like we do. Year in and year out, you never know how it’s going to play out. I tell the coaches all the time, you’re sitting there in the summer time and you cannot predict what’s going to come up by October. That’s the beauty of our game and the uncertainty of it all. But that’s why we have to make sure we take it one day at a time.’’
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