Cleveland Browns Photo Illustration

During the 2020 National Football League season, Callie Brownson became a high-profile person in a historic change in the Cleveland Browns organization and NFL. Joining the Browns as Coach Kevin Stefanski’s chief of staff early in 2020, Brownson proved her versatility over and over again, from behind the scenes to out-front sideline.

When he hired her, Stefanski described Brownson as “a go-getter” and “self-motivated.” He knew the job and what he wanted from the person who held it. He once had been assistant to Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress. “It’s very involved in every aspect of a football operation,” he said in a news release. “Callie is uniquely situated where she can go interact with football ops or PR or the locker room or the equipment room.”

As the difficult season played out through the coronavirus pandemic, Stefanski had multiple opportunities to turn to Brownson to keep the wheels from falling off his and her team. She contributed to Stefanski becoming NFL Coach of Year in his spin through not only the NFL as a head coach but also as head coach on any level of the game. Early on, she was on the sideline when for the first time in the NFL’s 100-year history women played roles for opposing teams and on the game’s officiating crew. (Chief-of-Staff Brownson, Washington coaching intern Jennifer King, and side judge Sarah Thomas.) That was only the beginning.

Later in the season, as victories mounted on the way to a 12-6 record, Callie Brownson continued making history by becoming the first woman to serve as an interim position coach in an NFL game. She filled in for tight ends coach Drew Petzing who missed the Jacksonville game to be present at the birth of his first child. Later, she stepped in for pass-game coordinator Chad O’Shea who missed a Pittsburgh game as a result of a positive COVID-19 test result.

Neither Stefanski nor Jarvis Landry, leader of Browns receivers, expressed concern whether or not Brownson could do this. “She’s one of the reasons,” Landry said during a Zoom conference, “why [the] . . . entire building goes the way it goes. I know she’s excited about it. I know she’s going to be on her details and make sure we’re doing the right things out there, getting the right personnel in the game and having the awareness that she has on the sideline to get her job done and make sure we’re doing ours.”

In other words, Callie Brownson had proved she could be one of the guys, could fit in anywhere, a coach that players could trust to do the “right things.”  Brownson was used to being under a microscope. She played eight seasons for the D.C. Divas of the Women’s Football Alliance and won two gold medals with Team USA Women’s football. She knew the game and had kept learning and growing while completing an internship with the Buffalo Bills in 2019. She came to Cleveland ready to take the next step.

Unfortunately, Brownson stepped in it during this offseason, something other Browns have done on occasion, as have we civilians. Brownson was arrested near her home in Brunswick on May 27 for operating a vehicle under the influence. She pleaded no contest [no admission of guilt yet guilty as she was found to be]. The Browns have suspended her and are consulting with the NFL on the length of the suspension.

Despite his disappointment in his protégé, Stefanski did not fire Brownson. Nor should he, though, as far as I’m concerned, she responded too much like one of the guys (and a few women, too) when she was arrested. Perhaps it was the alcohol talking mixed with the cold sweat of fear that I suspect she must have been experiencing. According to a police report, a breath test measured her blood content at .215%, more than twice the .08% that is Ohio’s legal limit. As bad as that is, it isn’t the worst thing that occurred.

After she had stepped in it, Brownson opened her mouth and a lot of what she had stepped in came spilling out. She had been caught driving 55 mph in a 35-mph zone. It was 12:27 a.m. Officer Steven Szuter, in his incident report, described Brownson’s eyes as bloodshot and watery, a smell of alcohol emanating from her, and speaking in a heavily slurred manner at times. She told Szuter she feared losing her job.

“I’m a Cleveland Browns coach,” Brownson informed Szuter. “This is detrimental to my career. I’m right at my house. I’d love to just go home, sir.” There is no indication the officer thought this funny. He explained he too had a job to do and that that was what he was doing—what he had to do if he wished to continue in his chosen line of work.

At least Brownson was polite while trying to use the influence of her employer. She did, however, change her story. When she was stopped, she told the officer she had had one glass of wine. (If we think we can get away with it, most people fudge the amount of alcohol consumed and frequency.) After the breath test at the Brunswick police department she admitted that she had had two or three glasses of “heavy pours.”

When I was arrested as a 16-year-old for drag racing on a residential street in Sacramento, California, I think I said only two words to the officer of which one was “sir.” I had been at church, not drinking, but I was scared to death. I did not try to use any influence because I had none; I threw myself on the mercy of the judge. I lost my driver’s license for a time but not a year, as Callie Brownson did. When friend and former colleague Stuart Warner wrote a review on Amazon.com of my recent book Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns, he compared cruising in my small Oklahoma hometown to a famous movie: “Think American Graffiti without the California cool.” Brownson might agree there is nothing cool about what either she or I did.

There is a difference, though. Brownson was 31 and wise enough to know that the spotlight is on her at all times and that she represents all those who would follow in her football footsteps. “She’s extremely remorseful,” Stefanski said.

She knows she is a trailblazer who took a wrong turn. A lot of us who aren’t trailblazers have, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the road. Callie Brownson will pay her fine and court costs, attend a driver’s intervention course, serve her suspension. “She was treated like anybody else,” her attorney Kevin Spellacy told the Akron Beacon Journal. “It was no special treatment.” The problem is, she sought such treatment and that is not a good look.