The Cleveland Browns organization has never been a model organization in the NFL. For a period in the 2010s, they were going through head coaches faster than a kid goes through Halloween candy. One of those instances was after the 2013 season, when the team fired head coach Rob Chudzinski after just one season. Former Browns offensive tackle Mitchell Schwartz was in his second season with the team at the time and said the bus ride back trying to figure out if Chudzinski got fired after a 20-7 loss to the Steelers was “rock bottom” of his tenure in Cleveland.
“We get back on the busses, and rumors starting flying that Chudzinski is getting fired,” Schwartz told Kevin Clark on Clark’s This Is Football podcast. “We get on the buses, and we’re trying to find information. We’re going through Twitter, I’m in my second year, I don’t have league sources or whatever, but guys are trying to talk people and figure it out. And then we’re texting each other, who’s on Bus One, because Bus One is where the head coach is, like what’s the vibe on Bus One. That whole bus ride back, we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, because we had no idea. There wasn’t an inkling.
“This whole two-and-a-half-hour bus ride we’re all texting each other trying to figure out what’s going on. I think it’s probably rock bottom that we were that excited about trying to figure out what’s going on after Week 17 after we just lost yet another game.”
While Schwartz said they never got an update, they found out after the fact that Chudzinski was indeed let go.
“We never got the vibe check on Bus One,” Schwartz said. “We did get the fired check, and he was fired.”
The Browns went 4-12 in their lone season under Chudzinski, a season that wasn’t much better for Pittsburgh, which improved to 8-8 with that Week 17 win over Cleveland. But Mike Tomlin was at no risk of getting fired, so right after the game was a lot less stressful for the Steelers and their coaching staff than it was for Cleveland.
The Browns went on to hire Mike Pettine, who lasted just two seasons in Cleveland. But that’s double the tenure of Chudzinski, who was let go along with general manager Michael Lombardi, who also lasted just one season.
Unlike Pittsburgh, a model of stability, the Browns’ coaching and front-office structure has been anything but that. Their current coach-general manager pairing of Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Berry are now in their fourth season together, but Stefanski’s seat is getting a little bit warm as Cleveland hasn’t made the playoffs since the 2020 season, his first as the team’s head coach.
The Browns have a lot of moments that one could classify as rock bottom, but players anxiously and apparently eagerly checking to see if their head coach was let go is certainly something that Schwartz felt was probably the lowest moment of his tenure in Cleveland. It’s been a franchise that hasn’t experienced much success, and while the Browns thought they found stability by trading for Deshaun Watson and giving him a long-term contract, his results have been iffy at best. It could end up being another failure on the Browns’ long, winding search to find a franchise quarterback, and yet another embarrassing moment for the organization if Watson doesn’t work out.
Schwartz went on to have an impressive NFL career, a four-time All-Pro and Super Bowl champion after he left Cleveland and signed with the Kansas City Chiefs, where he was an anchor for Alex Smith and later Patrick Mahomes. He hung the cleats up after the 2020 season but remains an active on Twitter and often breaks down offensive line tape.
