In the wake of a 3-14 season that was as miserable as the record indicates, the Cleveland Browns entered 2025 with a long list of issues but two pending decisions that overshadowed them all.

The first was finding a way to appease the trade demand made by generational pass rusher Myles Garrett, which the Browns handled by signing the six-time All-Pro to a contract that included more than $123 million guaranteed. The second was choosing not to fully dive but mostly wade into another quarterback search.

Three years after trading the farm for Deshaun Watson, Cleveland had to try to patch together its group at the game’s most important position with Watson recovering from a second torn Achilles tendon.

After the Browns overhauled two-time Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski’s offensive staff in hopes of getting the best out of Watson, the whole thing crashed. What started 2024 as the most expensive roster in NFL history in terms of cash spent ended as not barren but certainly old, expensive and thin. The early-season offense was historically bad, and the white flag was waved late with Bailey Zappe and Dorian Thompson-Robinson playing quarterback.

As the Browns moved on, the Garrett situation could be fixed with piles of money. The quarterback situation could not.

Team owner Jimmy Haslam acknowledged in the spring that the Watson trade was a “big swing and a miss” in an attempt to shoulder the blame. Earlier this summer, Haslam talked openly about low external expectations for this year’s team, how the three first-round picks the Browns gave up for Watson hurt the roster and how the franchise’s decision to trade down from the No. 2 pick in April to acquire Jacksonville’s 2026 first-rounder was driven by Cleveland’s outlook going forward.

At some point this season, Haslam said, the Browns will have to play their two rookie quarterbacks so they can evaluate them before next year’s draft.

“Absolutely, Kevin is aware of that,” Haslam said. “He knows how important quarterback is, and he and (general manager Andrew) Berry talk about those kinds of things all the time. It’s a daily, ongoing conversation.”

Over the weekend, Stefanski and his sons accompanied Haslam and Berry to Columbus, Ohio, for what was arguably college football’s most-hyped season opener in years, Ohio State versus Texas and mega-prospect Arch Manning. Later that same night, Haslam and Berry were credentialed for LSU versus Clemson, another battle of longtime college football powers with potential 2026 early-round quarterbacks, Garrett Nussmeier of LSU and Cade Klubnik of Clemson.

The Browns, quite obviously, are already working on their future. As for their past, the Watson blame game is not over. But it’s taking a temporary backseat to the real games, which begin on Sunday when Cleveland takes the field against the Cincinnati Bengals to open its 2025 season.

Despite what sounds a lot like a mandate to play the younger quarterbacks and steer the entire ship toward the future, what matters for Stefanski is right now. And that starts with two things that previously worked: Stefanski running his own offense and Joe Flacco back as the starting quarterback at age 40, looking to partially replicate the magical run he sparked in December 2023 when he threw for 300-plus yards in each game of a four-game win streak that helped the Browns clinch a playoff spot.

The simple part is getting back to the kind of base offense Stefanski has called before: a power run game keyed by a veteran offensive line and a zone-blocking scheme, using the tight ends in both conventional and unconventional ways, and throwing deep crossers to the wide receivers — the kinds of passes Flacco has been making since Stefanski was a young coaching assistant in Minnesota. Sunday marks the 17th anniversary of Flacco’s NFL debut. His opponent that day was also the Bengals.

Simple doesn’t really live here, though, which Stefanski knows as he prepares for his sixth season on the job — one that’s the most awkward but also most important yet.

The Browns drafted running back Quinshon Judkins early in the second round in April because the team thought he was an exceptional athlete whose style would fit Stefanski’s offense. But Judkins is not on the roster. He remains unsigned following a July 12 arrest on domestic violence charges that were dropped in mid-August.

After an unprecedented four-man quarterback competition that caused Stefanski to re-work his practice itinerary, Flacco was officially named the starter on Aug. 18. A week later, Kenny Pickett was traded to Las Vegas, leaving the two rookies to officially fill out the depth chart. Dillon Gabriel, a late third-round pick, is second in line. Fifth-round rookie Shedeur Sanders is third, and Zappe was added back to the practice squad just in case another emergency hits.

Stefanski steered clear of any public reaction to Haslam’s late-July quarterback comments. Though he’s maintained his understated, one-day-at-a-time focus in other conversations, he has at least somewhat acknowledged past mistakes. Frankly, it had to feel a little familiar last month when injuries to Pickett and Gabriel led to Stefanski incorporating a fifth quarterback, Tyler Huntley, into the practice rep chart. Six of the 90 players the Browns carried through most of August were quarterbacks.

“I hope I’ve learned from every year,” Stefanski said. “The thing about our sport, which I love (and) I know our fans love, is that you can’t predict this. It’s not scripted, and it’s the greatest reality show there is. We have to be prepared to navigate anything and everything that comes our way. That’s the fun part of our business.”

By new-era Browns’ standards, Stefanski is only a fedora short of being Paul Brown. The Browns played in one playoff game and had two winning seasons from 1999 to 2019, a number Stefanski matched with his second 11-win season in 2023. The only other coach to make it to even a third season under Haslam ownership (2012-present) was Hue Jackson, who made it just halfway through his third season after going 0-16 in his second.

The only other coach in the new era to make it at least four full seasons was Romeo Crennel, who got an extension after winning 10 games in 2007 but was fired following the 2008 season with an overall record of 24-40.

The 2022 move for Watson was supposed to mark a change in the team’s fortunes, expectations and goals. But Watson made 19 mostly unremarkable starts over three seasons and is now on the active/physically unable to perform list. He could be cleared and activated later this season, but his playing status is as murky as the overall outlook for 2025. The earliest the Browns could pursue a formal split with Watson would be ahead of the 2026 season. For now, the team has around $135 million in salary-cap commitments to the 2017 first-round pick.

Unless the defense reverts to its 2023 form and becomes a turnover-forcing machine, every path forward for Cleveland feels like it’s tied to the quarterback. And every judgment of Stefanski, Berry and everyone else involved likely will start with not just the performance the Browns get from the position this season, but with the management and development of it as well.

“If you’re a head coach, you’re charged with winning every week,” Haslam said. “But you also want to develop young players. Kevin has this period after (practice), I think he calls it the ‘Hungry Dawg’ period, where it might be six to 10 plays that (the rookie quarterbacks) get plays in or get extra work, and I think that’s really important to develop young guys. This is a big jump going from college to NFL, whether you’re a quarterback or not. So I think we’re doing a good job there, but time will tell.”

Is the guy calling the plays also the one driving the quarterback decisions? Time will tell on that, too.

Stefanski’s best Browns offenses have run the ball well, utilized play-action and had a clean, forward-thinking operation that used extra offensive linemen as fullbacks and backup tight ends as battering-ram quarterbacks when necessary. Last year’s offense was just a mess. The Browns’ 58 pre-snap penalties were the most in the NFL. In total, they were the league’s fifth-most penalized team.

The offense was so broken that offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey was predictably fired in the hours after last season ended. Stefanski had ceded the play-calling duties to Dorsey for the first time in his Cleveland tenure at midseason, but this year he’s taken them back.

Even if Flacco gets hot again the way he did two seasons ago, the Browns need to help both their pass game and defense by becoming a much better running team. After running back Nick Chubb suffered a major knee injury in Week 2 of 2023, the Browns finished in the bottom third of the league in rush EPA and rushing success rate in both 2023 and 2024, per TruMedia. Last year’s team had just eight rushing touchdowns, tying for the second-lowest total in the league.

Cleveland’s point differential of minus-177 last year was the league’s second-worst and the franchise’s fourth-worst of the new era, behind only the one-win season in 2016 and the first two years back, 1999 and 2000. Last year also marked the fourth time since 1999 that the Browns were the league’s lowest-scoring team.

Some of those numbers might explain why Stefanski’s signature beard is now as white as the numbers the team will wear on its jerseys for Sunday’s opener.

“I sent my daughter a picture of me the other day, and I said, ‘I think I’m aging at an exponential clip,’” Stefanski said in the spring. “But she said I wasn’t. I have tried to convince her that this is blond and not gray, but that hasn’t worked either.

“I mean, how do I feel? I feel great. I feel excited and privileged to coach this football team.”

Stefanski’s wide-zone run game has long been boosted by the presence and play of guards Joel Bitonio and Wyatt Teller, two of the Browns’ best players. Both are currently only under contract for this season. And both have seen enough to say with a fair level of authority that they’re witnessing a slightly different Stefanski this year.

“Coming out of last year, I just felt horrible, embarrassed, upset, all those things,” Teller said. “You get a little further away from it and it’s like, ‘OK, that was bad but we can clean some things up fairly easily.’ We still have a lot to work on, but a play here or there and maybe last year’s a little different. There needs to be a little more maturity with this stuff.

“I feel like Coach Stefanski is trying to build the foundation of a hungry, angry team, so we’ll see where it goes.”

Bitonio, the longest-tenured Brown, welcomes the return to a familiar Stefanski offense and the addition of new offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren, one of Stefanski’s first offseason hires.

“I think Kevin is willing to wear last year’s failure even though it’s obviously not all on him,” Bitonio said. “Since the spring, he’s talked to us about correcting mistakes right away and paying attention to little details. If we’re in a meeting going over a bad play, it’s not just ‘OK, that was wrong, let’s move on.’ We’re addressing it and fixing it. He’s addressing it and making sure it’s fixed.

“A different energy (or) a different urgency, I guess you can call it whatever you want. I think he knows what has to work and he’s going to be involved in making sure things are done a certain way.”

The Browns are at least semi-embracing a transitional phase that extends beyond their quarterback planning. Outside of their undrafted rookies, they opened training camp with just 25 players signed past this season. One of those is Watson, whose current 2026 salary-cap number is more than $80 million.

Among the group of players eligible for free agency in 2026 are the team’s four most experienced starting offensive linemen, starting cornerback Greg Newsome II, Pro Bowl tight end David Njoku, starting defensive end Alex Wright and talented cornerback Martin Emerson, who won’t play in 2025 after suffering a torn Achilles in July.

With six undrafted rookies and the six signed draft picks, the Browns are going forward with 12 rookies, at least 10 of whom will be active for Sunday’s opener. Getting younger (and cheaper) was going to be at least a little necessary. And Stefanski pushing a little harder and asking for more physicality through July and August was probably always part of the plan, too.

“I felt the guys’ urgency and they felt mine throughout (camp),” Stefanski said. “Since we’ve been back, going back to April, we’re constantly trying to build on what we’ve done the day before. But I’ve been really pleased with the mentality of these guys, and it’s something that continues to grow. It’s never a finished product in that regard because it’s a long season.”

In early August, Garrett said his teammates “are really showing an attention to detail and a discipline that I don’t feel was there all the time last year. It’s a heightened awareness, heightened urgency right now. And I want to continue to see that.”

After the No. 1 offense was kept out of the end zone by the defending Super Bowl champions on the first day of Browns-Eagles joint practices in Philadelphia last month, Stefanski busted out several trick plays on the second day — and most of them worked for big gains. The offense also had success on that day with Flacco consistently targeting Njoku and Jerry Jeudy.

But maybe the calls that day were designed to be confidence-builders. Maybe Stefanski is going into the season feeling a little desperate and willing to carry that into his game plans.

He’s probably going back to what’s worked with a quarterback who played here before. Might that include some aggressiveness and ingenuity that underscore an urgency from the play caller?

“You’d have to ask the players, honestly,” Stefanski said. “But we just know what’s at stake. We know what’s in front of us.”