After the Browns hired Todd Monken to be the team’s new head coach, incumbent defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz decided to move on.
In an appearance with Ryan Ripken, Schwartz addressed his decision to resign from the team after he didn’t get the head-coaching job following the firing of Kevin Stefanski.
“We had a lot of success on defense, and the Browns made a change at head coach, and they passed over me, with all the success that we had and the ability to develop players, our best players had their best years, all those different things,” Schwartz said. “And that was the decision they made. They wanted to go with an offensive guy. They chose Todd. I’m fine with that.
“They can make, you know, decisions that they want to make. But they can’t expect me to stay on board for that. Anybody that’s in any business, you get passed over for a promotion, when you’ve done a really, really good job in your job, and you think you were in line for that promotion, it’s time to go.
“And Todd deserved his own guy. A forced marriage isn’t gonna work in the NFL. And, you know, like having command of the players and having command in a locker room, all those things are extremely important, and I didn’t feel like I could do my job after getting passed over for that coaching job. It sort of, you know, just put me in a tough position. ‘Hey, we want you to listen to this guy, but we didn’t think — we didn’t want to make him that coach.’
“So I made the decision to resign, and I have to sit out this year as a result, but I think anybody that’s been in any business when you’ve done a good job when you mentioned those numbers — we weren’t one of the best defenses in three years. We were the best defense in three years. And the decision they made, that’s their decision.
“But to expect me to stay and to be on board for that, that’s just a tough situation. And it wouldn’t have been good for me, and it wouldn’t have been good for Todd. So it was best for him to get his own guy in there, and to move forward with him, as opposed to just having an arranged marriage, and having me there, and maybe having some players more loyal to me than him. It can just be a bad situation. Thirty-three years in the NFL, I’ve never been around that before. So, you know, that all went into decision.
“I wasn’t upset about it. I was disappointed about it. I wasn’t upset about it. I wasn’t mad about it, but it’s just, you know my experience told me that wasn’t gonna be a situation that was gonna work.”
The most obvious question is whether defensive end Myles Garrett would have wanted to stay with the Browns, if Schwartz had become the head coach. Regardless, it’s better for the Browns to have gotten significant value for the 30-year-old Garrett. With each passing year, that would have been harder to do.
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