Brian Johnson To Interview For Browns Offensive Coordinator, Looking For Second Chance After Eagles Disaster

The Cleveland Browns will reportedly interview Brian Johnson for their vacant offensive coordinator position Thursday. The Eagles promoted Johnson to offensive coordinator in 2023, but he will not return to Philadelphia after the team finished the regular season with an 11-6 record and lost in the Wild Card Round.

Cleveland is one of many teams looking to fill coaching vacancies after the team parted ways with former offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt at the end of the season.

Despite playing with four different quarterbacks and suffering a number of injuries at other offensive positions, the Browns’ defense was so strong that the team earned a postseason berth. They lost to the Houston Texans in the Wild Card round. With a more consistent offense, the team could be an aspiring Super Bowl contender in the near future, though Johnson has more to prove before earning such consideration.

With a vast coaching background in college football, Johnson became the Eagles’ quarterback coach in 2021. He has worked closely with Jalen Hurts since the quarterback’s second NFL season and was a member of the 2022 Eagles team that went to the Super Bowl. His promotion to offensive coordinator once seemed natural, but it was the beginning of the end for his Philadelphia tenure.

After coaching Hurts, one of the most dynamic players in football, directly earlier in his career, Johnson and the 2023 Eagles faced significant criticism for executing a bland, vanilla offense. Even when Philadelphia began the season with a 10-1 record, fans and analysts often complained that the team was not pleasant to watch and scrapped its way to too many close wins.

The first warning sign passed inconspicuously when the Eagles were defeated by Zach Wilson and the New York Jets. Hurts appeared uncharacteristically fatigued near the end of the game and the offense stalled spectacularly in the team’s first loss of the season.

Johnson and the Eagles’ offense continued to skate by for some time, but the wheels fell off late in the season as the team went from 10-1 to 11-6 to end the year. The team’s offensive coordinator was not solely to blame for this skid, as the defense also collapsed in several shootouts. Morale was exceptionally low going into the playoffs when Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers emerged from the lowly NFC South and defeated Philadelphia in a 32-9 drubbing.

With this ill-fated season in mind, Johnson will rely on opportunities from struggling teams to rebuild some of his reputation in the NFL. Cleveland is one such team in desperate need of a freshener on offense, and Johnson’s specialties at the quarterback position could significantly help. The Browns struck gold with Joe Flacco late in the season, but the 39-year-old quarterback is little more than a patchwork solution while the team struggles through three more years of Deshaun Watson’s fully guaranteed $230 million contract.