NFL Coaching News: Browns Hiring Todd Monken Sparks Shedeur Sanders Speculation

• The Cleveland Browns hiring of Todd Monken impacts Shedeur Sanders speculation
• Monken is an NFL veteran assistant, and this decision starts a minor domino effect around the league
• What was behind this hire? Can it work?

Don’t Try to Understand or Explain the Browns

The Browns are the most puzzling team in the NFL this side of the Jets. And the Jets aren’t all that puzzling.

It’s fine if teams go against the grain of current trends. In many instances, ignoring outside noise is the correct strategy. But when it’s a team with the history of the second incarnation of the Cleveland Browns franchise, it might be wiser to look at what’s working around the league with teams that are consistently successful, like the Eagles, Chiefs, 49ers, and Patriots, make a checklist of what they’re doing, and follow it.

But they insist on doing things the “Browns Way.” There’s no handbook for that template unless someone has quietly written one as a testament on what not to do.

Counting interim coaches, the Browns are now on Coach #13 since they returned to the league in 1999 after the original Browns franchise moved to Baltimore.

Their last head coach, Kevin Stefanski, was fired after six years and suddenly vaulted to the top of the most desirable available coaches for a few days before the Ravens (formerly the Browns) fired John Harbaugh.

Before Stefanski took the Falcons job, he could conceivably have had every single one of the available openings except for the Giants, who hired Harbaugh and gave him what amounts to de facto GM powers.

Apart from Todd Monken’s age (60 on Feb. 5), his resume is what teams look for in a head coach today. He’s a longtime offensive coordinator and quarterback coach. He has Browns ties, having been the OC in 2019 under Freddie Kitchens. And he was the Ravens OC in what was Lamar Jackson’s best season in 2024.

Still, while it can be explained in a “yeah, I guess that makes sense” way, it’s the Browns. So any logic gets put into context, if not thrown out the window entirely.

Shedeur Sanders is More Than a Search Engine Trick Here

After all this — the coaching change, the surprise hire, the bewildered looks at the choice — the Browns still need to decide on a quarterback.

Dillon Gabriel seems to have been a Stefanski guy and Stefanski is now in Atlanta.

Deshaun Watson will return from his Achilles injuries. His fully guaranteed contract is expiring after 2026. The cap hit is more than $80 million. He’ll be a Brown this season whether they play him or not.

And then there’s Shedeur Sanders.

There are two prevailing schools of thought with Shedeur:

• Mel Kiper Jr., Skip Bayless, and, naturally, Deion Sanders, think he should have been a 1st round pick in the NFL Draft, but fell to the 5th round for reasons that had nothing to do with football
• NFL decision makers avoided him because no team wanted to deal with the persistent media presence and inane questions about a player who was likely to be a backup, at least as a rookie

Objectively, Shedeur is a 3rd round talent who “dropped” out of the 1st and “fell” to the 5th.

He showed positive flashes, playing half the season in 2025. A 68.1 passer rating, 7 TDs, 10 picks, and a 56.6 completion percentage are not good. But it’s not terrible given the circumstances of a bad team with a woeful offense playing for a head coach that didn’t want him. In 2025, the Browns scored more than 30 points once and scored more than 20 points five times, four of which came with Sanders under center.

Given that Monken had great success with Jackson despite the seemingly acrimonious way his time (and Harbaugh’s time) ended in Baltimore, it’s clear the Browns are hoping Monken’s offense is more suitable for Shedeur, with the overwhelming likelihood that it will be tailored to him and what he does well.

One benefit of this is that it will put an end to the Shedeur conspiracy theories once and for all. We’ll unambiguously see if he can play or not.

After 2026, they can find a new QB or move forward with Shedeur.

Spoiler alert: The Manning Family (capitalization intentional) is not letting Arch go to Cleveland.

It’s absurd to expect Shedeur to come anywhere close to Jackson, a 3X All-Pro, a 4X Pro Bowler, and a 2X AP MVP.

Shedeur has been named to this year’s Pro Bowl, highlighting the ridiculousness of the Pro Bowl more than it warrants chastisement for the league, since it just wants eyeballs on the meaningless product the Pro Bowl has become. Of all the players in the league, few bring more eyeballs than Shedeur.

Under Monken, we’ll get a chance to see if he can be more than a trending topic, noteworthy for his last name more than anything else.

Monken Sends Minor Aftershocks Throughout the League

Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, a highly qualified head coaching candidate, was passed over in favor of Monken. He reportedly left the facility angry at being passed over.

Schwartz oversaw one of the NFL’s best defenses in 2025. He has head coaching experience in a very tough situation with the pre-Dan Campbell Lions. He’s an excellent football man.

Perhaps the Browns, understandably, wanted to move on from Stefanski’s staff. Regardless, Schwartz will be elsewhere next season, either as a defensive coordinator or an assistant head coach.

Monken was a candidate to follow Harbaugh to the Giants to work with Jaxson Dart, who, while not having Jackson’s mobility, has some of the same attributes to run a similar offense.

This is common when unexpected hires are made, and Monken is a surprise hire since the Browns were linked to younger coaches, Jaguars OC Grant Udinski, and Rams pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase.

The last few older coaches who’d never been NFL head coaches before, namely Vic Fangio with the Broncos, who was 61, and David Culley with the Texans, who was 66, did not fare well.

Then again, it’s the Browns. So what worked or didn’t work with other teams does not apply. They have their own path of finding strategies that don’t work. And they rarely disappoint.