CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Grant Udinski hype train came to a surprising and screeching halt early Monday, when Udinski withdrew himself from the Browns’ coaching search.
It has interesting ramifications for a search that seems to be winding down, with or without him.
The Browns top brass spent most of Monday in a lengthy second interview with Nate Scheelhaase, the Rams pass game coordinator, who also received an interview request from the Bills and is expected to meet with Buffalo later Monday about their head coaching vacancy.
There are also veteran finalists, Browns DC Jim Schwartz, former Ravens OC Todd Monken, and Commanders running backs coach Anthony Lynn.
But with a very quickly-changing landscape, let’s take a few more minutes to focus on Udinski, who had become a favorite of Browns Twitter in recent weeks.
While he doesn’t come away with the head coach job in Cleveland, this process was inarguably beneficial for him, and hopefully, at least to some extent, the Browns.
Udinski, who turned 30 on Jan. 12, is still in the mix for the Bills head coaching vacancy, but now he will get a significant raise from the Jaguars if he remains there as coordinator, a source told cleveland.com.
If he were to be hired by the Bills, he would be the youngest head coach ever in the league, just edging out Rams head coach Sean McVay, who was hired at 30 years and 353 days back in January of 2017.
But given his age, Udinski can afford to take his time on this.
His star was already rising — being a coordinator at 29 is obviously in and of itself a huge accomplishment — but by going through this process, his star has risen even more.
Look at how quickly a video of him talking about receivers adjusting their routes circulated over the last few weeks. The chatter around his potential has been incessant. In the future, some franchise will need to do minimal work to sell him to their fanbase.
But the reality remains that Udinski is still a coordinator who only has one year of experience. He’s never called plays. To some extent, it’s a gamble to hire him.
Whether he got a sense in Cleveland that he wasn’t their top option, or whether he just wanted to be patient with his first head coaching opportunity, it’s hard to say.
If he would land the Bills job, it’s certainly a better quarterback situation there with Josh Allen. But it’s also not a bad consolation prize for him to get a pay bump in Jacksonville and continue working with Trevor Lawrence for another year or two, and maybe, before he takes a top job anywhere, try his hand at calling plays.
If he remains with the Jags, he will undoubtedly be a top name for head coaching jobs next offseason, when there’s supposed to be a deeper QB class in the 2027 draft and even struggling teams will have a better chance at striking gold to fix the position.
Now, how could this process have been beneficial for the Browns considering Udinski became the third candidate to pull out of their search?
For one, hearing his ideas about their offense and their QB room in general throughout this very-detailed interview process may prove to be beneficial for this Browns front office and whoever does wind up with this head coaching job. That sort of farming of ideas is just a natural side effect of any head coach search.
But more holistically, it should have helped reinforce the path the Browns are on.
If they want to go with young, offensive-minded, and liked things Udinski brought to the table, there is still Scheelhaase, who at 35, also has a quickly-rising reputation.
He’s been described by some as the “next McVay.” In his role as pass game coordinator he has served as McVay’s “drawer” of plays. That gig has been a stepping stone to head coaching gigs for other members of his coaching tree, including Bengals coach Zac Taylor and Udinski’s current boss, Jaguars coach Liam Cohen.
By going through this process with both Udinski and Scheelhaase, however, it’s given the Browns an opportunity to compare and contrast and to gauge their comfort levels in whether young candidates can handle all the demands and adversity a head coach must face on a day-to-day basis — especially with this team, and especially with a QB future that is murky at best.
For Udinski and the Browns, it may on the surface seem like an unceremonious ending.
But maybe this particular wacky, coach-hiring train ride will help get both parties to their ultimate destination anyway.
Football Insider newsletter free trial: Take a minute and sign up for a free trial of our Football Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive content from cleveland.com’s Browns reporters.