Cleveland Browns name Pat Shurmur new head coach

By Tony Grossi, The Plain Dealer  

BEREA -- Rams offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur has been named the Browns' fifth head coach since they returned as an expansion franchise in 1999.
He will be officially introduced at a press conference on Friday at the Browns facility.
In hiring Shurmur, Browns President Mike Holmgren is retracing the path which led him to his first NFL head coaching job in Green Bay 19 years ago.
Shurmur was never a head coach at any level. But like Holmgren and his many eventual coaching proteges, Shurmur learned the NFL game as a quarterbacks coach and then as a coordinator in the pass-first offensive system now commonly referred to as the West Coast offense.
Others who followed the path paved by Holmgren include Steve Mariucci, Andy Reid, Marty Mornhinweg and Brad Childress. Jon Gruden started as a receivers coach before ascending to coordinator and then head coach. Of those, only Mornhinweg failed to reached the playoffs as an NFL head coach.
Shurmur, 45, never worked with Holmgren, but learned his offensive system under Reid in Philadelphia for 10 years -- the last seven as Eagles quarterbacks coach. For eight of those years, Browns General Manager Tom Heckert held various titles as the head of the Eagles' player personnel department.
Shurmur's connections to Holmgren stretch farther. He is the nephew of the late Fritz Shurmur, who was Holmgren's defensive coordinator in Green Bay for five seasons in the 1990s. Shurmur also shares the same agent, Bob LaMonte, as Holmgren and Heckert and numerous other branches of the Holmgren coaching tree.
Shurmur left the Eagles in 2009 to become coordinator in St. Louis under former Eagles defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. They were members of Reid's initial coaching staff in Philadelphia in 1999.
When Shurmur arrived in St. Louis, the Rams were coming off a 2-14 season and their offense ranked 27th. In 2009, they fell to 1-15 and the offense dipped to 29th. The arrival of quarterback Sam Bradford with the No. 1 choice in the 2010 draft had an instant impact. With Bradford starting every game, the Rams improved to 7-9 and their offensive ranking inched up to 26th.
Like the Browns, the Rams were hampered by an inexperienced receiving corps after injuries wiped out veterans Donnie Avery and Mark Clayton. They were 26th in points with 289 -- five notches ahead of the Browns (31st), who had 271. The Rams' 21 giveaways were eight fewer than the Browns'  29.
Shurmur received some criticism for play selection in the Rams' season-ending 16-6 loss to Seattle, which cost the Rams a spot in the playoffs as NFC West champion. In that game, Rams 1,200-yard running back Steve Jackson carried the ball only 11 times for 45 yards. He had only four rushing attempts in the second half. The Rams had seven possessions in the second half and none longer than six plays.
Shurmur, a native of Dearborn, Mich., was a three-year starter at center for Michigan State University in the late 1980s. He returned to the school in 1990 to launch his coaching career and coached tight ends, special teams and assisted on the offensive line for a span of eight years. He worked under former Browns defensive coordinator Nick Saban the last five years.
Shurmur moved to Stanford University in 1998 as offensive line coach before joining Reid in Philadelphia in 1999 as tight ends coach.
Reid named Shurmur quarterbacks coach in 2002. In that role through 2009, he was position coach for Eagles quarterbacks Donovan McNabb, A.J. Feeley, Koy Detmer, Jeff Garcia, and Kevin Kolb.
Shurmur is the first Browns head coach with purely an offensive background since Chris Palmer in 1999. He represents a final break from the Bill Belichick coaching tree, which spawned the Browns' last two coaches, Eric Mangini and Romeo Crennel.
When he launched the search to replace Mangini, Holmgren tipped off his intentions when he said, "I can get real excited about finding a young guy and having him take the ball and go with it."

Holmgren also said it would be "a pretty wide search ... we're not limiting ourselves in any way."
But only three candidates were formally interviewed. Shurmur was the first, following by Falcons offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey and Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell.
Former Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh turned down the Browns' invitation for an interview before he accepted the 49ers head coach job. Also, Gruden, who was considered a hot candidate before the search began because of his history with Holmgren, never was interviewed and said he would return to the ESPN announcing booth in 2011.

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