Browns Kevin Stefanski, in addition to announcing that Jameis Winston will start Sunday against the Ravens, also announced that he’s turning playcalling over to offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey with the offense last in the NFL and Deshaun Watson out for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Stefanski, who’s called plays since he took over as head coach here in 2020, said he believes it’s the best decision for the club. He also stressed that it’s entirely his decision.
He noted that it’s his job to oversee the whole operation regardless of whether he was calling plays or not. Other areas of the team have struggled this season, including special teams, which gave up a 100-yard return for a touchdown to the Bengals on the opening kick. Kicker Dustin Hopkins missed a 49-yard field goal and an extra point on Nick Chubb’s 1-yard TD run.
The Browns are last in total offense with 253.9 yards per game, and 30th in passing offense with 159.6 yards per game. They’re 29th in points with 15.57 per game.
Dorsey, the former Browns backup quarterback, returns to playcalling for the first time since getting fired by the Bills last season when they were 5-5. They went 6-1 the rest of the way.
Dorsey replaced the fired Alex Van Pelt at the start of this season but Stefanski retained playcalling duties. Still, Dorsey introduced many of the concepts that he coached while with the Panthers and under then offensive-coordinator Brian Daboll in Buffalo, including a lot of run-pass options, spread concepets, and dropback concepts that Daboll learned in New England under Bill Belichick.
The Browns struggled with a lot of those concepts in the first six games of the season with Stefanski calling plays, but he said he felt comfortable calling the revamped offense, which was designed to maximize Watson’s dual-threat skillset. It did anything but.
Watson, playing in a dysfunctional scheme with a supporting cast that looked lost at times, ranked 27th in the NFL with a 79.0 rating, and 31st in ESPN’s QBR at 23.5. He never got a chance to see how he might look in the new scheme with Dorsey calling it.
Dorsey helped turn Cam Newton into an NFL MVP with the Panthers, also helped mold Josh Allen, a raw and sometimes erratic talent, into an MVP candidate and one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Hired as the Bills’ quarterbacks coach in 2019 under coordinator Brian Daboll, Dorsey took on the added duties of passing game coordinator in 2021, and was promoted to coordinator in 2022 — with a strong endorsement from Allen — when Daboll left to take the Giants head coach job.
“When he got here three years ago, my career definitely changed in terms of how I viewed the game of football,” Allen said before the 2022 season. “Just having a guy in the quarterback room that played the game, was the winningest college quarterback of all time —38-2 —he’ll never let me forget that. He says it all the time. But just the way he approaches the game, he’s competitive, he’s smart, he works his a– off.”
During his first season working with Allen in 2019, the second-year pro and No. 7 overall pick in 2018 notched the biggest improvement in QB Rating (+17.4) of anyone in the NFL that year.
In 2020, he helped Allen to a second-place finish in MVP voting and single season franchise records for passing touchdowns (37), completions (396), 300 yard games (8), passer rating (107.2), completion percentage (69.2), passing yards (4,544) and total touchdowns (46). He became the first player in NFL history with 4,000+ passing yards, 30+ passing TDs, and 8+ rushing TDs in a season.
In 2021, Dorsey helped Allen record a 149.0 QB rating in the playoffs, which marked the highest all-time among QBs with at least 50 attempts in a postseason.
In 2022, Dorsey’s first season as the Bills’ primary play-caller, they ranked second in the NFL in both total offense (397.6 YPG) and points per game (28.4). Allen, in making his second Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro that year, threw for 4,283 yards with 35 touchdowns and 14 interceptions en route to a 96.6 passer rating. He also rushed for 762 yards and seven TDs.
Dorsey’s prolific offense helped the Bills finish 13-3 last season with a plus-169 point differential, second in the NFL. Even in 2023, Allen flourished under Dorsey except for the interceptions. In 10 games with him, Allen completed more than 70% of his passes, and threw for 2,600 yards with 19 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also rushed for seven TDs.
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