New coaches, new scheme, no problem for Browns Pro Bowl guard Joel Bitonio

BEREA — Joel Bitonio has been around the block a time or two since being drafted by the Browns a decade ago. That includes going through his share of schematic changes.

The latest comes this year, when Ken Dorsey was hired by coach Kevin Stefanski to be the Browns' offensive coordinator. For veteran Pro Bowl guard Bitonio , exactly how many schemes does the arrival or Dorsey mean for him in his time in Cleveland?

"Three, four," Bitonio told the Beacon Journal during training camp. "I would say probably this would be my sixth different scheme, you know what I mean?"

Bitonio's rookie season was also the first season under coach Mike Pettine, when Kyle Shanahan was his offensive coordinator. Shanahan lasted one season before leaving and John DeFilippo took over.

Enter Hue Jackson in 2016 as the head coach, which is to whom Bitonio basically credits the offensive scheme as he recounts the experience even though Todd Haley was the offensive coordinator. Freddie Kitchens takes over as, first, offensive coordinator in 2018 after Jackson's mid-season firing before becoming the full-time head coach in 2019.

Kitchens' firing after the 2019 season led to Stefanski's arrival, which also brought with it offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and, just as important for Bitonio, offensive line coach Bill Callahan. Van Pelt was let go of after last season, while Callahan was allowed to join the staff of his son Brian, who was hired as the Tennessee Titans head coach this offseason.

That led to Dorsey being hired to replace Van Pelt. Meanwhile, Andy Dickerson was brought in from the Seattle Seahawks to replace Callahan.

Did you follow all of that? Now try to let Bitonio explain the exact differences.

"From year one we had Shanahan, to year two we were with DeFilippo, and we tried to run the same run game stuff, but the passing game and the way we called plays was completely different," Bitonio said. "Then you bring in Hue, and he has kind of a different more power scheme, more power run game, and then Freddie's there for a year, and that's kind of a different connection, too. And then I think Coach Stefanki came with Coach Callahan, and now we're kind of moving into our probably sixth version of a Stefanki-Dorsey offense."

Bitonio acknowledged the two-and-a-half years Jackson was around, with Kitchens following for the next year-and-a-half, helped at least momentarily slow the revolving door that greeted him initially with the Browns. Stefanski's presence, meanwhile, has stabilized not just the offense, but the entire organization like it had not been since the 1999 rebirth.

That stabilization has also meant that, even when there is a schematic change as there is now with Dorsey coming in, it's not as head-spinning as it when Bitonio was starting out with a new offensive coordinator every year.

"I think early in my career, I went from Kyle to Flip to Hue my first three years, and putting in a new offense every year, I was like, man, this is kind of tough," Bitonio said. "You're learning new things. … It's nice having the same terminology and the same stuff because you get more comfortable and you worry about the details a lot more instead of just, like, 'Hey, this is a big picture.' You get into the micro picture of things and you can really understand what you're working on."

How can it be the same if essentially all the offensive coaches, except for Stefanski and wide receivers coach Chad O'Shea, are different? How can you tout a different scheme and yet speak so much about similarity?

Bitonio cited the scheme in which Dickerson coached with the Seahawks under then-head coach Pete Carroll, which features a lot of the same power-running traits utilized in the Browns' scheme. So, too, are bits and pieces of the Philadelphia Eagles' scheme, which has been incorporated by new assistant line coach Roy Istvan.

Both line coaches have had their own input with Stefanski and Dorsey in the formulation of the new Browns scheme. That is why Bitonio said there's plenty of the old Browns offensive DNA in the new one.

"We've kind of, the first few weeks of camp, used three or four different offenses creating our offense,' BItonio said. "You have Buffalo, you have ours from last year, you have Coach Dickerson from Seattle, you have Roy, our assistant from Philly. … But in this league, it's funny because everybody has different calls and things, but at the end of the day it's like you're running zone one way, you're running power. It's all the same stuff. It's terminology how you want to block it, how you want to attack it, but there's definitely some similarities there."

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

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: New coaches, new scheme, no problem for Browns Pro Bowl guard Joel Bitonio