STEVE LOVE

Author,  Award-Winning Journalist and Proud Oklahoman

Browns center JC Tretter and his coach Kevin Stefanski have been front and center in leading

Matt Starkey/Cleveland Browns

By most media accounts, eyes fixed on new and recovering players as the Cleveland Browns began their three-day mandatory minicamp this week—players such as defensive end Jadeveon Clowney and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. Some in these classifications had skipped voluntary Organized Team Activities held previously.

As curious as everyone might be about the condition of Clowney’s surgically-repaired meniscus and OBJ’s torn ACL in his left knee, also surgically-repaired, the spotlight should have focused sharply on Coach Kevin Stefanski and JC Tretter. They stood front and center as key figures in not only the team-building that occurs during minicamp but also in explaining potentially contradictory, if not conflicting, approaches and goals.

Because the coronavirus pandemic altered normal offseason schedules and preparation around the National Football League during 2020, Stefanski had never run a minicamp or a customary offseason as a head coach. Last year, it didn’t seem to matter. The Browns reeled off their best record (11-5) of the expansion era (1999 to today), won a playoff game in Pittsburgh, where they win any kind game once in a blue moon; they even gave previous Super Bowl champion Kansas City a scare before settling for a 12-6 record. It was appropriate that on a Zoom call, Stefanski was formerly presented the Pro Football Writers of America Coach of the Year Award for which he credited his assistant coaches and the players for making him “look good.” In this new day of a new year, Tretter, Browns center and NFL Players Association president, likewise looked good.

He explained clearly and precisely the lines he and Stefanski walked in order to allow the Browns to come together without residual animosity over decisions made regarding the voluntary OTAs and how minicamp would play out. “I think what we did really well is we had really good communication throughout,” Tretter said. “I would not really classify anything as a ‘negotiation’ . . .” It did not sound difficult for these two important leaders to have avoided the conflict often inherent in negotiations.

Stefanski seemed to make it easy by listening to Tretter, team leaders, and older players. “We had never had an offseason with Kevin,” Tretter said, “so we did not know how Kevin usually holds an offseason program. Kevin came to us with a plan laid out.” And, because he listens, that plan included modifications on physical work—especially 11-on-11 drills—where bodies fly about and injurious crashes can occur. Now the intent, Stefanski explained, is get the work in but “take care of each other and stay away from collisions.” Even in other lines of work—including writing—this can prove impossible.

This week in The New York Times, Ben Smith, the newspaper’s media columnist, dug into the machinations of at least a partial unionization of The New Yorker magazine. Principal among the issues Smith explored was how the respected, high-profile staff writers would respond to “their less-heralded colleagues—fact checkers, copy editors, web producers, social media editors—. . . forming a union and demanding raises.” In the context of football and the Browns, this would be an equivalent to whether quarterback Baker Mayfield would support Tretter and the union, which did not tell players whether or not they should participate in voluntary OTAs but did try to show them how improving the offseason model “in the best interest of the health and safety of the players.” Mayfield, as he did last year, held a passing camp in Texas for receivers.

Mayfield’s decision avoided offending Tretter and the offensive linemen who protect him while simultaneously tightening the bonds between passer and receivers. It also allowed new Browns and those who get fewer repetitions during regular-season game preparation additional work with the person with whom they must be on the same page. As at The New Yorker, stars are stars and lesser lights can feel overlooked and underappreciated. It happens everywhere, in every walk of working lives.

Eric Wemple, a Ben Smith counterpart at The Washington Post, also showed as much. On the occasion of The New York Times oral history project titled “The Pentagon Papers at 50” addressed what happened—or didn’t—to researcher Linda Amster. She received no recognition for “happily” accepting the risks of participating in publication of those bombshell papers leaked to The Times in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg. The act helped to end the Vietnam War. Amster said the editor who chose her for the secretive project of researching whether any of the Ellsberg treasure trove had been published elsewhere, told she was omitted from the credit box because: “Well, you were a woman and we might have to go to prison and we decided you shouldn’t have to go to prison.”

When The Times won the Pulitzer Prize for public service—the Pulitzer of Pulitzers—Wemple wrote, “Amster did receive a signed letter from then-Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. “To my immense satisfaction,” Amster told The Times in [an] audio interview, “there was never any criticism of what appeared in the paper, no one saying this isn’t true, this is a mistake. It was factually accurate. I’m very, very proud of that.”

But Amster was “FURIOUS” at the time to be overlooked because those in charge did not think to communicate to her their intentions and the reasoning behind them. JC Tretter and Kevin Stefanski avoided such a pitfall and thus put in place the first puzzle piece of what the Browns hope will be a special season that results in recognition for their best and “less-heralded” Browns alike, those whose contributions to building this team may not make the night sky glow like shooting stars but are no less important.

The whole matters. Cohesion matters. Support matters. It matters whether it’s the Browns football team . . . astar-studded New Yorker magazine staff who could not do their jobs as well without the “less-heralded” . . . or New York Times editors of a half century ago who believed they had to shield a female researcher from the risk of jail because Ellsberg had given them purloined papers. The Pentagon Papers may have weaken public trust in government but they also set a country back on the right track.

Among the reasons unanimity is elusive among the New Yorker staff, Ben Smith found, is “the support [Editor David] Remnick retains among the signature writers is deep.” They do not want a union coming between them and the man they adore, fear, and see as a “somewhat distant father whose approval they always seek.” Kevin Stefanski may not yet have reached Remnick’s leadership and trust levels but he is climbing fast.