CLEVELAND, Ohio — Former Browns offensive coordinator Todd Monken will have a chance to come back and do things his way this time around.
Monken, who ran the offense here in 2019 under Freddie Kitchens but didn’t call plays, has been hired as the Browns 19th full-time head coach, replacing Kevin Stefanski, who was fired after the season. He was hired on the 24th day of the search.
Coming off three successful years guiding Lamar Jackson and the Ravens’ explosive offense, Monken, who turns 60 next Thursday, will have a chance to rejuvenate the Browns’ dormant unit – one that finished last and second-last in points scored the past two years – and transform it into a playoff-caliber offense.
He’ll also try to keep Jim Schwartz, one of the other Browns’ finalists, as defensive coordinator, but that will be between the two of them. Monken, who has full authority to hire his own staff, was chosen ahead of the other two finalists in Schwartz, who’s under contract through 2026, and Rams pass coordinator Nate Scheelhaase, 35.
It remains to be seen if Schwartz, a favorite for the job among defensive players such as Myles Garrett and Denzel Ward, will choose to stick around after being passed over.
Of course, Monken will need a good starting quarterback to pull the offense forward — whether it’s Shedeur Sanders or someone else — and the Browns are making that their No. 1 priority coming off their 8-26 mark over the past two seasons. Bringing 37 years’ coaching experience including 11 in the NFL, Monken was hired from an eclectic pool of 10 candidates that included Schwartz, Scheelhaase, Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski, former Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel and Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who withdrew from contention to take the Ravens head coaching gig.
In the end, it came down to the three finalists, and the Browns placed a premium on Monken’s seven successul seasons as a coordinator and developer of quarterbacks as they make fixing the points-challenged offense their mission.
“Todd Monken will be a great head coach,” Harbaugh said before last season. “He’s an old-school football coach with kind of a new school and a great mind. Always creative. He works well with his staff. I’m really excited about 3.0, that iteration of this offense going forward. We found ourselves through the last offseason and this season in terms of how we want to organize the offense and tie it all together.”
Monken returns to the place where he used to refer to his Thursday availability with the Cleveland media as his weekly dentists appointments, given that he had very few answers for the scattershot offense run by Kitchens, who was one-and-done after a dysfunctional 6-10 season.
Tasked with managing all of the offensive chaos surrounding Kitchens, Baker Mayfield, Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry, Monken put his head down and went to work, trying to deliver cohesive gameplans to the staff and players in spite of it all.
Despite Monken having been an accomplished play caller in the ranks college and with the Bucs, Kitchens refused to let him handle the chore here, to his own detriment.
“Todd’s done a good job all year of keeping us on course,’’ Kitchens said during the season. “Todd would do an excellent job calling the plays. I just feel more comfortable doing it right now. Nothing against Todd.”
Limitations aside, Monken helped direct an offense that saw running back Nick Chubb finish second in the NFL with 1,494 yards and eight TDs. Mayfield threw for a single-season career-high 3,827 passing yards, while throwing for 22 TDs, and Beckham recorded his last 1,000-yard season in the NFL despite playing through 2024.
Monken returned to his beloved college ranks from 2020-22, helping Georgia win back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022 as offensive coordinator, running a sophisticated pass-oriented and high-flying offense.
Supported by arguably college football’s best defense ever in 2021, Georgia’s offense ranked in the Top 10 in points per game (38.6, ninth), yards per play (7.0, fourth) and total first downs (341, tied for seventh).
In 2022, Georgia led the nation in total net yards (7,517) and total points (616), with Heisman Trophy finalist QB Stetson Bennett throwing 27 TDs, while rushing for 10 more.
The Bulldogs’ success captured the attention of Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who was seeking an accomplished coordinator to showcase the dual-threat abilities of Jackson, while elevating his passing game. He called on Monken, who burst onto the scene by coaching Jackson to his second NFL MVP honors award after producing the NFL’s fourth-best passer rating (102.7), throwing for 3,678 yards, 24 TDs and just 7 INTs.
He added 821 rushing yards and 5 TDs to become the only QB in NFL history with multiple seasons (also 2019) reaching the incredible 3,000/800 milestone.
“It’s great,” Jackson said during the broadcast of a preseason game in Monken’s first year. “I’ve been sending him plays of stuff I’ve been seeing, and he’s been putting them in practice, and they’re working. So it’s like, I’m glad he’s listening to me, man.”
A finalist for AP NFL Assistant Coach of the Year in 2023, Monken also led a Baltimore offense that ranked No. 4 in scoring (28.4 ppg) and No. 6 in total yards (370.4 ypg), averaging an NFL-high 156.5 rushing yards per game in his first season as coordinator.
In 2024, the Ravens led the NFL in total offense (424.9 ypg), rushing offense (187.6 ypg), red zone TD efficiency (74.2%), and in 2025, they finished the season with the second-best average rushing yards per game at 156.6 yards, as well as 11th in the league averaging 24.9 points per game.
Unfortunately for the Ravens, they missed the playoffs after rookie kicker Tyler Loop missed the gamewinning field goal attempt against the Steelers in the season finale, spelling the end of Harbaugh after an 18-year run, as well as some of his staff.
Monken, who may have been a point of contention in Harbaugh’s departure because he wanted to keep his OC, had a chance to join Harbaugh with the Giants if he didn’t take the Browns job.
Amid his 26 years as a college coach was a three-year stint as head coach at Southern Miss from 2013-15, where he took over a program that finished 0-12 the previous season, and guided a dramatic turnaround that saw the Golden Eagles become postseason bowl participants by the end of his third campaign. In 2015, he led one of most explosive offenses in the NCAA, and earning Conference USA’s Coach of the Year honors.
In Cleveland, he inherits a quarterback room consisting of Deshaun Watson, and second-year pros Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel. Browns GM Andrew Berry has said that the new coach will have a lot of input into the quarterback situation, meaning Monken will have a chance to help decide if the Browns need to look outside the building for their starter in 2026, or if he believes the Browns can win with what they have. The Browns have the No. 6 and No. 24 picks in the draft, and also enough money to invest in a bridge starter if necessary.
Regardless, Monken is tasked with turning this moribund Browns offense into an elite unit that can match its championship-caliber defense.
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.
