Todd Monken opens 1st Browns training camp 'unapologetically himself'

BEREA ― Ryan Fitzpatrick had little knowledge of the man who was going to be his offensive coordinator when he joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2017.

Fitzpatrick knew that Todd Monken had just been the head coach at the University of Southern Mississippi before being hired in Tampa in 2016. He also knew that Monken had, before that, been a wide receivers coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars and offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State University.

"So, I knew he's an offensive guy with a big personality, but I didn't know the person at all," Fitzpatrick, now an analyst on the Amazon Prime NFL pregame show, told the Beacon Journal in a recent interview. "I expected just a real Xs-and-Os scheme guy. And what I shortly realized was I got a people person, not just a scheme guy."

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Ten years later, the "people person" and "scheme guy" who was getting his first opportunity to be an NFL offensive coordinator with the Bucs is now getting his first opportunity to be an NFL head coach. Monken will run his first full-squad training camp practice as the Cleveland Browns head coach July 29, the culmination of a coaching journey that started in 1989 as a graduate assistant at Grand Valley State University.

The 60-year-old has talked about the quest to join the exclusive club of 32 NFL head coaches. It's one he believed was within reach several times since he was hired by then-Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter in Tampa a decade ago.

Monken's coaching career includes 13 stops prior to getting the Browns' job, most recently three seasons as the Baltimore Ravens' offensive coordinator. The former NCAA Division III quarterback at Knox College coached defensive backs, running backs, wide receivers and quarterbacks, as well as being a coordinator multiple times over; he's been everywhere from NCAA Division II to the SEC, the Mid-American Conference to the NFL.

"Well, I think that's one of the things that makes Todd special," Koetter told the Beacon Journal in a phone interview. "No. 1, he comes from a family of coaches, his whole family. I mean, he grew up in a household, his dad is a high school coach and then he came up the hard way. I mean, he played at small college, he's coached at small college. He's coached at every level, and I think he's got empathy for guys, but at the same time he knows now he's in a position where you're trying to win a world championship at the highest level.

"So although it can be difficult, I mean I think he's been that way his whole life and then he's learned the lessons needed on the way up and everything's not … the path to success is not a straight line."

However, part of Monken's success has been his ability to be a straight shooter. The Browns players have, basically universally, praised their new head coach's ability to get right to the point.

There are those who can see bluntness as off-putting. Fitzpatrick saw it as something that allowed Monken to connect with his players, because to the former quarterback, it was "never about posturing with him."

Instead, whether it's with his players or his fellow coaches, what you see with Monken is what you get.

"He's unapologetically himself in a real good way," New York Giants coach John Harbaugh told the Beacon Journal in a phone interview. "He's all about football. He'll have a great conversation with you on any kind of topic. … It's always genuine. He's not trying to be somebody he's not. He's not trying to imitate somebody else. He's just being who he is. I felt like the guys respected that. I felt like the guys appreciated it. I know I did and I think that's one of the great traits about Todd."

Harbaugh, while he was Baltimore's head coach, hired Monken to be his offensive coordinator in 2023. During those three seasons, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson won the 2023 NFL Most Valuable Player when he passed for a career-high 3,678 yards with 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions, while he just missed out on the 2024 award despite becoming the first player in NFL history to record over 4,000 passing yards and 900 rushing yards in a single season, while throwing 41 touchdowns and four interceptions.

For those three seasons, the Ravens ranked first in rushing yards with 8,512 yards ― 166.9 yards per game ― second in scrimmage yards with 19,860 and third in points per game with 27.9 and rushing touchdowns with 70. The last two of those, Baltimore had All-Pro running back Derrick Henry joining the dual-threat Jackson to form one of the most potent offenses in the NFL.

Monken had arrived after three seasons at the University of Georgia, where he helped the Bulldogs win back-to-back national championships with Stetson Bennett IV at quarterback. That's part of the appeal to Monken as an offensive mind, the malleability of his system to the talent around him.

"I thought Tom was just a really open-minded, flexible type of a coach," said Harbaugh, who was going to bring Monken with him to New York as offensive coordinator had Monken not gotten the Browns job. "He could live in a lot of different worlds offensively, had so much experience with kind of every aspect of offensive football over the years. That came out really clearly in the interview process. So just from an X-and-Os standpoint, scheme standpoint, he was a really good fit for what we were trying to do."

Monken's first offensive coordinator job was in 1998 at Eastern Michigan, where the Eagles averaged 273.6 passing yards ― third in the MAC ― and 88.6 rushing yards. His final Georgia offense in 2022 averaged 295.9 through the air and 205.3 on the ground, while their 41.1 point-per-game average was fifth nationally.

In between those two stops, Monken was Les Miles' pass game coordinator at both Oklahoma State and LSU, and offensive coordinator for Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State, which is not exactly close on the offensive spectrum. There were also his first two NFL coordinator jobs with Tampa and Cleveland.

Each stop had its own different and unique wrinkles within the scheme. Each stop, though, carried one similar piece of DNA.

"Well, I would just say that his identity isn't really a formation, it's a mentality," Fitzpatrick said. "And that mentality is that Air Raid mentality of playing with the absence of fear. That's what he took from the Air Raid and that's how he calls it. He's going to attack you. And if you look at the tape, you look at how he did it in Tampa versus how he did it in Georgia versus how he did it with Lamar, they were all completely different.

"So he's going to cater his style to the quarterback, but the one silver lining or the thing that you see that's going to be the same with all of them is that he's going to call plays to put his quarterback in a position to have success. And you feel it through the headset. And that was my favorite thing about Todd is I could feel his confidence and it allowed me to play free and allowed me to play better."

Fitzpatrick played in 14 games with 10 starts over his two seasons with Monken in Tampa. At the same time, the Buccaneers were dealing with wild highs and lows that their No. 1 overall pick in 2016 ― Jameis Winston ― was providing.

The last of those seasons, in 2018, Monken was given play-calling dutiers coming out of the preseason. The Bucs had six games of at least 342 passing yards out of their first seven ganes, including games of 417 and 450 yards.

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Koetter credits the ability of Monken to work with those quarterbacks that allowed the offense to have success. It's something he thinks will help with what he's dealing with in Cleveland now with Deshaun Watson and Shedeur Sanders fighting for the starting job as training camp gets going, as long as he doesn't allow the head-coaching duties take away his aggressiveness.

"I think he gives the quarterbacks he works with confidence because, if he practices something during the week, he's going to call it on game day and he's also going to let the quarterbacks have some input on what they like and what they don't like," Koetter said. "And like I said, he's not going to be afraid on game day to call it. Now one of the things I found personally when I was a head coach is I probably became less aggressive as a play caller when I was calling the plays because sometimes I was worried about how it was going to affect our defense and our special teams, so that'd be a new thing at least from an NFL standpoint for Todd. … But that'll be somewhat something Todd will have to adjust and learn like he's done everything else along the way."

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ. Sign up for Browns Insider newsletter at https://profile.beaconjournal.com/newsletters/browns-insider/

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Todd Monken opens 1st Browns training camp 'unapologetically himself'