With Mike Tomlin stepping down on Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves hunting for a head coach at a time they certainly didn’t expect to. Pittsburgh will have a ton of competition during this cycle. Nearly a third of the league’s teams are now searching for their own head coaches as well. One team the Steelers have to compete with has a bit more familiarity with this process: the Cleveland Browns.
The Browns fired Kevin Stefanski before the Steelers learned Tomlin would be leaving. While each are searching for their own answers, ESPN’s Courtney Cronin thinks the Browns are more attractive than the Steelers and other teams to potential head coaches.
“The reason that we would say Pittsburgh or Baltimore is the best opening out there, is because they don’t usually find themselves in this situation, where they’re trying to hire head coaches,” Cronin said Thursday on Unsportsmanlike. “The Cleveland Browns are a better opening. The Haslems finally getting out of their own way and letting the head coach do what they have to do, ’cause I think the Browns can get back to where they want to be in the AFC North faster than the Pittsburgh Steelers. If I’m a head coach, I want to sign up for that.”
The Browns have cycled through plenty of head coaches during their struggles. But to their credit, they did stick with Stefanski for a while. He took the job in 2020, and coached Cleveland for six years, making the playoffs twice during that span.
While Cleveland has had its struggles, that is some recent proof that the Browns won’t immediately fire a head coach. However, the owners haven’t exactly been hands off. Even last year, the Browns selected Dillon Gabriel in the third round, then Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round. Each of them started several games for Cleveland this season. Drafting both within a couple rounds of each other probably doesn’t happen if ownership and the front office are on the same page.
There are some positives and some drawbacks to both the Browns and Steelers’ jobs. Each franchise can offer a new head coach some sort of stability. Although it is hard to beat the Steelers, who just gave 19 years to Mike Tomlin. But each team has plenty of talent on defense and some solid youth across the roster to build around. However, the Steelers don’t have a long-term answer at quarterback, and neither Gabriel nor Sanders has solved that problem for the Browns yet.
Ultimately, there are some positives to the Browns’ opening. While you’d have to find a quarterback, or hope one of either Gabriel or Sanders steps up, there’s plenty of young talent. On offense and defense, the Browns have their fair share of building blocks. And becoming the head coach who turns the Browns into a perennial contender would be quite the achievement in Cleveland.
However, Steelers fans certainly won’t agree, and there’s plenty of reason not to. Pittsburgh has plenty of youth itself. There are some aging players, some with very high cap hits. But it’s not like the Steelers are operating on a budget. If the Steelers make the right decisions at head coach and quarterback, a franchise that just won 10 games certainly can remain in contention, potentially sooner than the Browns can get there.