The Cleveland Browns have experienced little to no success since their return to the NFL in 1999.
But there was one brief period where it appeared the franchise had finally turned the corner.
That was in 2020, when first-year head coach Kevin Stefanski and third-year quarterback Baker Mayfield helped lead the Browns to the playoffs for the first time in 18 years.
Once there, they handed the Pittsburgh Steelers the third playoff loss in what is now a seven-game postseason losing streak, and then pushed the Kansas City Chiefs to the brink before falling in the Divisional Round of the playoffs.
At the time, it seemed as if the Browns had finally cracked the code with a young head coach and a brash quarterback joining together to take on the NFL.
This is Cleveland, of course, where everything ends badly when it involves the Browns, so the joy did not last long.
In 2021, an injured shoulder left Mayfield ineffective, and the Browns lost four of their last six games to miss the playoffs. That offseason, ownership made the ill-fated decision to trade for quarterback Deshaun Watson, shipped Mayfield to the Carolina Panthers for peanuts (a conditional fifth-round selection), and things were never the same.
Mayfield bounced from the Panthers to the Los Angeles Rams before landing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2023, where he has thrown for 12,237 yards and 95 touchdowns in three seasons, while leading the Buccaneers to the playoffs twice.
Meanwhile, in Cleveland, the Browns cycled through quarterbacks as Watson was suspended in 2022, and then injured in 2023 and 2024, limiting him to just 19 games.
A surprise playoff appearance in 2023 helped to ease some of the hurt, but a combined record of 8-26 the past two seasons finally brought an end to Stefanski’s tenure in Cleveland. (When you can’t fire the owner, someone has to take the fall.)
As fate would have it, Stefanski was recently hired by the Atlanta Falcons, who share the NFC South Division with the Buccaneers and Mayfield, setting up an annual home-and-home meeting between the head coach and his former quarterback.
That is an angle that D. Orland Ledbetter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explored on Tuesday in a (paywalled) column that described Stefanski’s time in Cleveland as a “dumpster fire” at the quarterback position.
Mayfield, as he has been wont to do during his career, decided to throw some additional fuel on the fire by calling out both Ledbetter and the way his former coach handled the end of their time together in Cleveland:
Failed is quite the reach pal. Still waiting on a text/call from him after I got shipped off like a piece of garbage. Can’t wait to see you twice a year, Coach.
The NFC South has always been a strange division, where rivalries, like the one between the Falcons and New Orleans Saints, are rarely noticed on a national level. But with Mayfield and Stefanski now in the same division, the Falcons and Buccaneers games this fall are going to be must-see TV.
And in a fun scheduling twist, the Browns play both the Falcons and Buccaneers next season, with Atlanta and Stefanski coming to Cleveland, but, sadly, the Browns are facing the Buccaneers in Tampa.
