CLEVELAND, Ohio —Jack Conklin explained it best when asked on locker clean out day why he thought it didn’t work out with position coach Andy Dickerson.
“It was a lot of things,” Conklin said. “Switching our offense and stuff was tough, and unfortunately a lot of times the O-line coach gets blamed when you can’t run the ball, and we didn’t run the ball well enough. So it’s a bummer to see him get fired, but when you go 3-14 changes have to happen.”
The Browns fired Dickerson and offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey on Sunday, after an extremely underwhelming year. For the 2024 regular season, the Cleveland offense plummeted to the bottom of the league, ranking 31st in yards per play (4.57), 32nd in passing yards per play (5.30) and 23rd in rushing yards per play (4.11).
While head coach Kevin Stefanski reiterated multiple times this week that the blame doesn’t fall on one person, it’s undeniable that Dorsey and Dickerson got the brunt of it.
“Just the bottom line, I want to go in a different direction,” Stefanski said. “We need to improve, as everybody knows, on the offensive side of the ball and that’s what we plan to do.”
There were other contributing factors of course to the poor run game in particular. Injuries on the O-line led to the Browns using seven different starting lineups in their first eight games. The running back room struggled with production as Nick Chubb returned from his 2023 knee injury, and then broke his foot in Week 15 against the Chiefs.
So where do they go from here?
While the offensive coordinator search remains underway, the Browns did get a new O-line coach already, announcing the hiring of Mike Bloomgren on Wednesday.
The 47 year old spent the past seven seasons as the head coach at Rice, but was fired in October. When Bloomgren broke into the NFL with the Jets in 2007, he spent two seasons as a quality control coach for the Jets in 2007-08 under Brian Schottenheimer and Bill Callahan, the Browns’ former O-line coach who they missed dearly in 2024.
Callahan, arguably the best O-line coach in the league, was with the Browns from 2020-23, but left to go coach with his son, Brian, who took the Titans’ head coaching job last year.
“I think we all knew that Coach Callahan was a great O-line coach,” Joel Bitonio said. “He’s had the resume, he’s done it. We had four years of experience with him. So I think we all knew that that was going to be something we missed. But we had faith in Coach Andy, as well.
“And it’s different philosophies, the way you coach, Bill’s a little bit more in your face about things and Andy’s more, how do you want to approach this? It’s more of a group think type of thing. But, yeah, we didn’t do enough. We didn’t execute well enough on offense, and I can’t point fingers at one person.”
Players and coaches may not want to point fingers, but Callahan’s absence was certainly felt.
In his wide-zone scheme, Bitonio and Wyatt Teller were able to become two of the best pulling guards in the league, making it to multiple Pro Bowls each — Bitonio made it all four seasons under Callahan and Teller made it in three. Ethan Pocic went from being an insurance policy at center to being one of the highest-graded players at the position in 2022 and 2023.
“I thought me and Wyatt as pullers running some outside zone, I think that was what I did well in my career, and I probably pulled less than 10 times this year overall,” Bitonio said. “And there were games in my career where I pulled eight or 10 times in a game, so it was different, for sure, but I think that’s where the strength of offense is and we can build it up, get the right people in the right position.”
While it’s not surprising coming from Conklin and Bitonio, both sounded a similar tone in the direction they believe the offense needs to go from here — back to more play-action passing and that wide-zone scheme, incorporating more of what Stefanski had success with early in his time in Cleveland with Baker Mayfield, and late in 2023 with Joe Flacco.
“I think I would say where we had our most success is we’re a wide-zone team,” Conklin said. “We brought in guys that do that and have been very successful at doing that. I hope that’s where we move back to.”
While a more specific look at scheme won’t come until later, it’s undeniable that Callahan had an influence in the earlier years of Bloomgre’s career.
After his stint as a quality control coach with the Jets under Schottenheimer and Callahan, he was promoted to offensive assistant in 2009 when Rex Ryan took over as head coach. In 2010, he served as assistant offensive coordinator, and the Jets finished with an 11-5 record, averaging nearly 23 points per game.
“That time trained and instilled a lot of beliefs I have in the position and in the manner in which it should be taught,” Bloomgren said.
While so much is at play heading into the 2025 season, including the health of players and what will happen at left tackle, it seems like a return to a version of the old, mixed in with some new, is certainly on the table for a unit that will look to return to dominance.
