The Looming Decision: Play Calling
Josh Thornton
We have been here before. It’s a tale as old as our quarterback woes here in Cleveland. Who will call the offensive plays? Who is going to sit in the Crow’s Nest on Sundays’ and guide us to fruitful waters? Coming off a season that brought us chaos and confusion after the first handful of scripted plays, we long for some semblance of competency in doing this seemingly daunting task of play calling.
The Browns have given us no answer to this question to date. Coach Stefanski did promise us to have a decision before game one… wow, that sentence brought back horrifying memories of pointless quarterback competitions culminating in that same timeframe. Ewww. Memory jump over. Back to play calling. So, it seems we get to sit and speculate who will don the play calling cape. I’m sure some time consuming, enthralling conversations are to be had on this topic but is it as important as we make it?
The short answer… yes. Absolutely. Like I mentioned earlier, you saw what we suffered through last season. Fred was supposed to kill it play calling too, based off the 8 games in the season prior anyway. He was supposed to have a creative, offensive mind. We got burnt on that one my friends. Fred’s failures doesn’t just highlight his offensive ineptitude, it also highlights other important traits necessary to be a successful play caller in the NFL.
The big one in, in my opinion, is leadership. This always seems to take center stage in terms of importance. You have to be able to instill the confidence in people needed to follow you into battle. Get them to buy-in and trust your decision making. Trust. That’s a good one too. Trust is forever tethered to leadership. They are symbiotic to each other. One builds the other which in turn builds that one back. Beautiful how it works, if it’s the right person.
I think we as Browns fans mostly feel that the organization has done a pretty good job of bringing in talented, intelligent coaches. Both Stefanski and new offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt are fairly green when it comes to actual play calling though. Not a long track record of proven success in this area. This makes it all the more important to tab the right guy to lead this offense.
Can Stefanski handle this duty along with cutting his teeth at being an NFL head coach? Maybe. Hell, maybe likely. We know he is labeled and a very good offensive mind. He has displayed leadership traits over his NFL coaching career. Do we want to saddle the new head coach with those duties though? I know you can site instances to validate either side of this argument. Valid points aplenty, I’m sure.
Is Alex Van Pelt ready to make the jump to full time play caller? He did good work with Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay and Andy Dalton in Cincinnati. Players like him. They trust him. Can he run this new Stefanski offense though? How much has he been hurt by the state of our country right now amidst this pandemic?
I guess we will have to wait until the 11th hour to get the final ruling from Coach Stefanski. Its ok fellow fans, we are used to this game. Here is an opinion for coach from a guy who doesn’t matter (me)…
You go with Van Pelt. The guy you hand-picked, coach.
Lead the team Mr. Stefanski. You’re at the helm… send Alex to the Crow’s Nest.
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