CLEVELAND, Ohio — The most baffling aspect of the Cleveland Browns‘ disastrous 2025 campaign isn’t just the team’s performance on the field — it’s the curious organizational dynamic where GM Andrew Berry appears safe while two-time Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski faces increasing scrutiny.

This puzzling power structure was front and center in the latest Orange and Brown Talk podcast when host Dan Labbe read a pointed question from listener Scott Mandel: “I don’t understand why Andrew Berry is so safe and Kevin Stefanski is in trouble. Berry gave him this horrible O-line, horrible wide receiver room and the quarterback situation. He’s had one good draft. Why is Kevin Stefanski, the two-time Coach of the Year, potentially getting the shaft?”

It’s a question that perfectly encapsulates the frustration of Browns fans witnessing a team that seems perpetually stuck in organizational dysfunction despite repeated leadership changes.

While Browns beat reporter Mary Kay Cabot has reported that Berry’s job appears secure thanks largely to his recent draft success, she hasn’t received similar assurances about Stefanski. “I haven’t been able to get anybody to give me any indication about Kevin Stefanski one way or the other. But having said that, nobody is saying to me, ‘Hey, he’s safe.’”

The podcast conversation revealed several factors potentially working against Stefanski despite his previous coaching accolades. The most damning evidence: losing to multiple one-win teams with a top-tier defense.

“The Browns felt that they had enough talent on the roster this season to win more than three games and they lost a number of games that they should have won,” Cabot explained. “They lost to two one-win teams. That can’t be happening. You can’t be going out there and losing to those kinds of football teams. That’s just unacceptable, really, no matter what’s going on.”

Special teams failures have also been a persistent problem without significant intervention from Stefanski. “That was a big issue this whole entire season. They would have at least two more victories, maybe three more victories if they had better special teams,” Cabot noted.

Yet the podcast discussion didn’t let Berry completely off the hook. Labbe pointed out several roster construction failures that directly hampered the team’s performance.

“There are clear areas where you can point to this and say, like Andrew and the roster, some of the roster decisions left this team short,” Labbe said. “And there are things that we’re pointing to today, when we talk about Shedeur Sanders and all the factors around him, some of it’s bad luck, but a lot of it is of their own making.”

The quarterback situation particularly stands as an indictment of the front office. When other struggling teams found veteran quarterbacks who helped them win games — Sam Darnold in Seattle, Daniel Jones in Indianapolis — the Browns cycled through Kenny Pickett and eventually landed on fifth-round rookie Shedeur Sanders.

“When you see Daniel Jones go to Indianapolis and have success, you see Sam Darnold playing really well all of a sudden again in Seattle,” Labbe pointed out, “it is frustrating to kind of see how the quarterback situation played out here and see some of these other situations where teams have found guys that were able to help them win some football games.”

Cabot acknowledged financial constraints played a role in the Browns’ quarterback approach but questioned whether more could have been done. “If you needed to carve out $15-$20 million dollars to pay for a quarterback this year, I think you could have found a way to do that somehow, some way.”

The most revealing insight from the podcast might be about the alignment between coach and quarterback — a dynamic that could determine Stefanski’s fate. As Cabot explained: “The head coach that coaches the Cleveland Browns in 2026 has got to have a say in the quarterback and has to have a big say in the quarterback because his name is on every win and every loss.”

With the Browns potentially eyeing Shedeur Sanders as their future, the question becomes whether Stefanski is the right coach to develop him — or if the organization will once again restart the cycle with new leadership tied to their quarterback of choice.

Here’s the podcast for this week:

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