Cleveland Browns part ways with defensive coordinator Joe Woods
BEREA — Joe Woods is out as the Browns' defensive coordinator, the team officially announced Monday, ending months of speculation about his job status.
Coach Kevin Stefanski said in a press conference on Monday with general manager Andrew Berry that he elected to let Woods go hours after the team's season-ending 28-14 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Woods, 52, is the lone Browns assistant coach to have been dismissed at this time.
"Not an easy decision," Stefanski said Monday afternoon. "I have a ton of respect for Joe the person and Joe the coach. He is a great, great man. He works extremely hard. He treats people the right way. I just felt like it was ... in the best interest of our football team to go in that direction. He will land on his feet because he is a good football coach.”
Neither Stefanski nor Berry would say definitively if any other assistant coaches were going to be dismissed. Stefanski was specifically asked about the status of both special teams coordinator Mike Priefer and the remaining defensive assistants, but said he would meet with all of his coaches through the course of this week.
Stefanski did say no internal candidates would be considered for the defensive coordinator job. He sounded interested in potentially retaining some of the defensive staff.
Patriots LB coach Jarod Mayo, Steelers LB coach Brian Flores among targets
League sources have confirmed three names being targeted by the Browns are Seattle Seahawks associated head coach/defense Sean Desai, New England Patriots linebackers coach Jarod Mayo, Tennessee Titans defensive assistant Jim Schwartz and Steelers senior defensive assistant/linebackers coach Brian Flores. Mayo has coached for the Patriots under Bill Belichick since 2019.
Flores, who held the same position as Mayo did with New England from 2016-18 before taking the Miami Dolphins coaching job in 2019, spent this past season coaching on Mike Tomlin's staff. Flores was fired by the Dolphins after the 2021 season, which has led him to sue to team and the NFL, alleging racial discrimination in the league's treatment of minority coaches and executives.
Desai is the lone one of the four without any ties to Belichick. He's in his first season with the Seahawks after spending 2013-21 in various roles with the Chicago Bears, including as their defensive coordinator in 2021.
“I don’t know if there is one specific set of criteria," Stefanski said. "We are excited about some of the people who we will be able to talk to, and everybody’s résumé is going to be a little bit different, so I am very open minded in that regard. This is a process that you have to stay true to. I want to make sure that we meet with all of the candidates and understand what they are about.
"I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, so of speak. I want to make sure that we remain true to it, trust in it, really get to know these candidates and see how that vision fits in with what we are trying to accomplish.”
Woods' dismissal has been expected for some time, especially when the Browns were officially eliminated from playoff contention after a Christmas Eve loss to the New Orleans Saints. The Browns ended the season 7-10, the second consecutive losing season since their 2020 playoff season.
Stefanski was not willing to specify the ultimate final straw that led to the change.
"I think you really have to pull it apart," Stefanski said. "It is never one thing. It really isn’t. There are things that I wish I could have done better in that regard. We will look at everything. You always look at scheme obviously, but it is never one thing, it really isn’t.”
Why did the Browns fire defensive coordinator Joe Woods?
If there was one thing in that could be central to the decision, it was the inability of the Browns defense to sustain consistency over a full season. For the second consecutive season, it was unable to start the year off well, but managed to turn it around over the last month-and-a-half.
The Browns' defensive turnaround began in a Week 12 overtime win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Starting then, they allowed 305 yards a game, compared to the 349.9 they had allowed over the first 10 games.
For the season, the Browns finished 20th in points per game allowed at 22.4. However, they gave up just 16 a game over the final seven games, although the 28 points Pittsburgh scored were the most they allowed in a game since a 31-23 Week 11 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
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The pass defense, which was allowing 214.8 yards a game over the first 10, allowed an average of just 172.4 yards over the last seven. Granted, the best two quarterbacks they faced in that span — Tampa Bay's Tom Brady and Cincinnati's Joe Burrow — did throw for an average of 241.5 yards.
"I think we worked through a lot of the issues that we had early on in the season," Woods said the Thursday's before the finale. "We just try to give them a solid game plan that they can go out and play fast and execute. I think throughout the early parts of the season we made those adjustments, and I think the guys really probably since Week 11 that we have played a lot better.”
That improvement has allowed the Browns defense to rise to 14th in the league in total yards allowed at 331.5 yards per game. Their pass defense, which was 16th coming out of the Buffalo game, finished fifth at 196.2 yards a game.
The Browns also had a massive up-tick in takeaways over the last six games. They had created just eight through the first 12 games, then created 12 over the final six games.
The part of the defense that ultimately sealed Woods' fate was the run defense, which he specifically blamed himself for during a Dec. 29 availability. After being ranked seventh in the league through three games, allowing just 83.7 rushing yards in that span, they ended the season ranked 25th by giving up 135.2.
The decline started with back-to-back 200-plus-yard rushing performance allowed to the Atlanta Falcons (202 yards) and Los Angeles Chargers (238 yards). Those were two of eight games over the final 13 games in which they allowed at least 150 yards, and two of 10 of at least 130 yards.
"I want to be clear, this shouldn’t just be a coordinator issue," Berry said. "The defense’s low performance is not just about Joe. Part of it there are when you look back to being at this point decisions that you look back at the offseason you would have done a little bit differently. Also, I think there is accountability with our guys as well, right? We want our guys to seize the moment. We all share accountability with it."
The second-half turnaround mimics what the Browns did a year ago, specifically in points allowed. They gave up 45 points in a Week 10 loss in 2021 at New England, at which point they were allowing 24.1 points a game, to a final season average of 21.8 points.
The Browns were a top-10 defense in 2021, despite the team's 8-9 record, in multiple categories. They were fifth in yards per game (311.5) and passing yards a game (202.3), while they were 13th in points allowed per game and 12th in rushing yards a game (109.2).
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski brought Joe Woods with him from the Vikings
Stefanski hired Woods, with whom he had coached with the Minnesota Vikings, on his original staff when he was named Browns coach in 2020. That season, the Browns went 11-5 in the regular season, earning just the franchise's second playoff appearance since its 1999 rebirth and its first playoff win since Jan. 1, 1995, when it defeated the Steelers in the AFC Wild Card round.
The Browns finished that season ranked 17th in yards allowed at 358.4 and 22nd in passing yards allowed at 247.6, but ninth against the run at 110.8 yards allowed. They were 21st in points allowed at 26.2, but did create 21 turnovers in the regular season and another six — five in a Wild Card win over Pittsburgh — in two playoff games.
Woods had spent the 2019 season as the defensive backs coach and defensive passing game coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. They won the NFC championship that season before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
"The one thing I will say is I was in this situation as a position coach in 2019," Woods said last Thursday. "When I went to San Francisco, I think (49ers coach) Kyle’s (Shanahan) first year, they were 6-10 and then they were 4-12 the second year. When I got there, there were a lot of people calling for (former 49ers defensive coordinator and current Jets coach Robert) Saleh because they regressed a little bit defensively. Kyle made some changes, and we went in and they were 4-12 in last place in the division in 2018. We had a couple key additions in the offseason, and we went from last to first in the division, 13-3 and went to the Super Bowl. I feel like that is something that is possible here just with the roster we have."
Woods had spent the previous two season before that, 2017-18, in his only other stint as an NFL defensive coordinator with the Denver Broncos. His other NFL experience had been as a defensive quality control coach with the Buccaneers (2004-05), as well as the defensive backs coach with the Vikings (2006-13), then-Oakland Raiders (2014) and Broncos (2015-16).
Contact Chris at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com.
On Twitter: @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Browns defensive coordinator Joe Woods fired
