Browns HC Todd Monken on Teaching Cleveland’s Young Team How to Win in the NFL

The Cleveland Browns are 4-2, in first place, and holding home wins over the Ravens and the Steelers as tiebreakers. Their head coach would like everyone to know they still have not played their best football, that his voice is shot from yelling and not from cigarettes, and that he did not mean to tell his kicker to get lost on camera.

Todd Monken came on The Rich Eisen Show ahead of a three-game road trip that starts in Tennessee, and he was every bit as blunt as advertised.

Asked about his mentors, Monken barely knew where to start. Coaching runs through the whole family. "My dad and his four brothers were Illinois high school coaches and head coaches and they're all in the Illinois Coaches Hall of Fame," he said, adding that his two brothers and three cousins coach high school and another cousin is a head coach at Army.

Then came the professional list. Monken credited Tom Beck, who gave him his start at Grand Valley State, and Lou Holtz, who he said "really kind of changed my path forever at Notre Dame." He pointed to Dirk Koetter, with whom he worked in Jacksonville and Tampa, as a major influence.

The biggest stretch, though, was the most recent one. Three years with Kirby Smart at Georgia and three with John Harbaugh in Baltimore, he said, "gave you almost a doctorate in coaching those last six years."

That education is why Monken believes the timing finally worked. He said "100%" that an earlier version of himself would not have been ready, pointing back to the period after the 2018 season in Tampa, when he interviewed for the Packers, Jets and Bengals jobs.

"What I thought I knew or where I thought I was then, the good Lord put me here in '19 and there was a lot of learning there," he said.

Now he sees a franchise in good shape structurally, with recent drafts producing young talent. "I think there's no better time to be the head coach of the Browns than now," Monken said.

For all the winning, Monken did not pretend the offense is finished. Some concepts traveled from Georgia to Baltimore to Cleveland, but "unfortunately, I wasn't able to bring some of those players."

He was candid about the gap. The Browns have had moments "below the line coaching and playing," have been inconsistent, and have not started fast. What has kept them afloat is ball security and their quarterback. "We haven't been turning it over, which has given us a chance," he said, crediting Deshaun Watson for coming up big in a number of games.

His spin on it was simple. "We're 4 and 2 and still haven't played our best football offensively," he said, "and so the task is to start it this weekend."

Asked how a coach addresses slow starts, a problem plenty of NFL offenses share, Monken said he mostly doesn't. Telling a team to start faster is "just saying the obvious. Hell, my wife says that." He added that her other suggestion is, "Why don't you just call the plays that work?"

The real work is weekly film study of scheme, strengths, play calling and execution. "There is not one answer, otherwise it'd be fixed," he said.

What he leans on instead is a personal philosophy. "As long as you recognize that you're human and you're going to fail and you own it and fight like hell to fix it, you always have a chance."

He framed the Tennessee game the same way. Losing it would not be "a death sentence," he said. "If you win you're five and two, if you're not then we're not there yet."

The show pressed on what these late wins are building, and Monken said the residual effect is real. He described a young roster that likes to work, from the moment he arrived in the offseason through training camp. "You just spot the ball and they go out and practice."

The message he is trying to land is about resilience play to play. Citing Curt Cignetti's line that every snap is "an entity of its own," Monken said his players have learned that "the other team's going to make plays, and we continue to battle."

The Browns also have a set of non-negotiables: "physicality and effort, connection, and no celebration loafs." The glue, in his view, is how much the players like each other. "I think the closer you are, I think the harder it is to let your teammates down," he said.

And he keeps them focused small. When asked on a Wednesday about the weekend, his answer was, "I'm just worried about today. Hell, I'm more worried about Wednesday's practice."

The first conversation with Jared Verse, who arrived in a trade from the Rams, opened with one line. "I basically said, isn't it cool to be wanted?" Monken said. He stressed the Browns "would not have done the trade without him involved in it."

His other instruction: "Just be you. You don't have to try to be Myles Garrett. Myles is already taken."

Monken acknowledged Verse is frustrated by the lack of sacks while playing defensive end in a new system rather than outside linebacker, but said he sees a ton of growth ahead and that Verse has handled a shocking situation "great."

Monken has loved every bit of the job. "How cool is it to be a head coach in the NFL?" he asked, more than once. He has handed out game balls four times, and admitted the first time "I had no idea what I was doing, so I just gave it to everybody."

He described the night after a win as a short window. The game ends, there is media, he gets home around 6:00 or 6:30, flips through highlights, and by the next morning he is watching tape. "There is nothing like the locker room after a win," he said. "There's no drug, there's no alcohol."

That led to the viral moment with kicker Andre Szmyt, who got a game ball and a dismissive send-off. Monken said it "came across the wrong way." He wanted Szmyt to take the ball and run with it, but the kicker just stood there staring. "You're like the sixth ball. I've had enough," Monken said, swearing a few times on air as he relived it. His wife's reaction: "What did you do that for?"

His message to Browns fans was patience, with a big idea attached. He noted how quickly the NFL swings, from "you're a one-and-done coach" after a rough Jacksonville game to coach of the year talk four weeks later.

What he wants is bigger than this season. "Wouldn't it be cool that we're the start of like 20 years from now when I'm 80 that people look back and go, 'Man, why don't we do it more like the Browns?'" he said, flipping the old line that the "Browns are going to brown."

Rich closed by asking about the gravel in Monken's voice. People assume he smoked "a couple packs of Marlboros," Monken said, but the real cause is years of yelling. He has tried lozenges. "I don't know what to do about it. It's just the way it is."

After he signed off, the studio tallied the damage: five S's, one F, and one "lung dart." Rich, for one, was very glad he no longer controls the dump button.