Fantasy Football 2019: Impact of Cleveland Browns coaching changes

The Cleveland Browns are one of eight teams to change their head coach and of 17 to change offensive coordinators. How will this affect fantasy football?

Astute fantasy football owners who take time to explore the impact of offseason coaching changes will have a leg up on their league-mates as draft season arrives. Some coaching replacements offer little in the way of fantasy football influence.

For example, the Dallas Cowboys hired former backup quarterback Kellen Moore as their offensive coordinator. However, incumbent head coach Jason Garrett will retain control of the offense and continue calling plays.

Also in this regard, the Houston Texans promoted tight ends coach Tim Kelly to their offensive coordinator role, yet Bill O’Brien is expected to retain play-calling duties. That may change if the talented Texans offense inexplicably grows stagnant but, for now, expect few material changes to the Texans offensive approach.

Thus, we begin a series in which we’ll explore the other 15 teams who have made major offensive coaching changes and highlight the potential fantasy football impact of each along the way. They are ranked by the degree of prospective impact, for better or worse, so these rankings are by no means a reflection of team talent or projected performance.

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Counting down, we start with the No. 15 — the Cleveland Browns.

15. Cleveland Browns

New Offensive Coordinator: Todd Monken

New head coach Freddie Kitchens upgraded the Browns coaching staff in January by hiring former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Todd Monken to a similar role in Cleveland. Despite Monken’s success as a play-caller for one of the most prolific passing offenses in football last season, he won’t be overhauling a system that was successfully implemented by Kitchens last year.

Kitchens is expected to continue calling plays and Monken was largely deferential in his early offseason comments and press conferences. Therefore, it was easy to surmise that Monken’s impact wouldn’t match up to those of the others on this list.

Or at least it seemed that way on the surface. Last month, a report from Mike Silver surfaced that hinted at friction between the two offensive masterminds, a notion that has been put to rest — for now.

Disagreements and speed bumps are to be expected. So, as time passes, Monken’s hands will help mold the offense and adapt it to the emerging talents of its talented personnel. In the first full season of the Kitchens era, the Browns are still very much a work in progress, but unbridled excitement has gripped northern Ohio.

Combine the momentum from last year’s second-half success with the arrival of all-world wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and Browns training camp understandably has a much more optimistic vibe in 2019.

Ryan Lindley, who was added to the staff as the team’s running backs coach last season, also finds himself in a new role this season. The former quarterback, who tutored Jared Goff and Carson Wentz prior to the 2016 NFL Draft, is now in a more familiar role as quarterbacks coach.

Lindley’s presence as a sounding board and guiding hand for Baker Mayfield only solidifies the second-year signal caller’s status as a top 5-10 quarterback in any fantasy football format. Mayfield’s shiny new weapon, Beckham, is worthy of his late first/early second-round pick ADP (via Fantasy Football Calculator), thanks to the massive volume of targets he’ll haul in from a quarterback who’ll look his way early and often.

Mayfield has many other mouths to feed, but the Browns offense projects to be efficient enough to keep most of them satiated. One player who looks to be negatively affected from a target volume perspective is wide receiver Jarvis Landry.

My initial take from the OBJ addition was that it was a boon for Landry, but I’m slinking away from that stance as I continue warming to the idea of “statistically progressive” campaigns from receiver Antonio Callaway and tight end David Njoku in Kitchens’ system (I detest the term “positive regression”).

Both Njoku and Callaway made significant strides under Kitchens last year, particularly in terms of catch rate. Before Kitchens took over in midseason, Callaway caught only 21 of 45 targets for a horrific catch rate of 46.7 percent. After Hue Jackson was shown the door, Callaway hauled in a respectable 22 of 34 (64.7 percent). Meanwhile, Njoku improved his catch rate from 60.8 to 67.6 percent. Expect these two budding young playmakers to keep building on their progress in 2019.

Landry won’t be a complete non-factor, but he’s arguably being over-drafted in Round 5, and will likely yield additional targets to a crowded-but-talented backfield featuring Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt (after Week 8) and a disgruntled Duke Johnson

Chubb should once again be the “alpha Dawg” in this pound. Hunt will nip at his heels from time to time down the stretch, and Johnson will have a role all season, assuming he stays healthy and his trade request is denied. If you want to invest in this backfield, take Chubb early (Rounds 2 or 3), Hunt in the middle rounds or Johnson late in PPR leagues.

Cleveland offers fantasy football gold at nearly every position, so the hype machine surrounding the Browns is in overdrive for a reason. Expect increased creativity and efficiency from this emerging, high-octane offense.