Cleveland Browns’ Week 7 game could end with a major NFL firing happening and it may not be Kevin Stefanski

This matchup between the Browns and Dolphins could have some big ramifications for the future.

Brandon Little, Kyle Crabbs
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The Cleveland Browns are in a bit of unfamiliar territory heading into Week 7 of the NFL season when they welcome the Miami Dolphins to town. Even though the Browns have a 1-5 record and the league’s worst offense, averaging just 13.7 points per game, they will actually be favored at home. Cleveland will be going up against a team with the same record, which will be a welcome change in competition after facing every NFC North team except the Chicago Bears, as well as the rest of the AFC North, through the first six weeks.

Things aren’t going well in Cleveland outside of what the defense has done and the progress shown by the majority of the rookies. Head coach Kevin Stefanski’s seat may not be hot just yet, but it’s certainly warming up with how ineffective the offense has been for a second straight season. Week 7 presents a real opportunity to put together a solid performance — and it could lead to a major change on the other sideline.

A convincing Browns win could be all she wrote for Mike McDaniel

The first NFL firing of the season came on Monday when the Tennessee Titans decided to part ways with head coach Brian Callahan. Another coach who could be nearing that same point is Mike McDaniel in Miami. The Dolphins are 1-5 this season and entered the year hoping to compete for a playoff spot in the AFC East. That no longer looks realistic, and Miami desperately needs to turn things around in McDaniel’s fourth season.. A to Z Sports’ Kyle Crabbs, who covers the Dolphins, has more on the situation in Miami below.

Mike McDaniel’s status in Miami is shaky at best. There are come continued drumbeats that owner Stephen Ross does not want to make a change and would like this to work. NFL insiders have indicated Ross’s desire for this to work. But every time the Dolphins take the field and lose a close game, the steepening divide between the powers at the top of the team continue to manifest and become more evident. 

McDaniel and Tua Tagovailoa have been on opposite ends of several explanations for things that have gone wrong since the start of the season — including whether or not Tagovailoa made a wrong decision throwing an interception in Week 3, and the standard for which players are held by their leadership after Week 6. Other NFL insiders have all conveniently (and independently) broached how handcuffed McDaniel is running an offense through a quarterback in Tagovailoa who “can’t get hit”. 

This team is in a mad scramble for survival behind the scenes. And if Miami goes up to Cleveland and drops a game to the 1-5 Browns amid their own youth movement, it will threaten to plunge Miami into full on chaos beyond what we already saw this past week after McDaniel condemned Tagovailoa’s public call-out of teammates after their loss to the Chargers. The bigger the circus becomes, the greater the odds Stephen Ross simply says enough is enough. McDaniel the play designer is not the problem, but McDaniel the leader is under an intense microscope. And few things tell you more about a leader than how they and their unit handle adversity. I’m not sure how much more adversity McDaniel and the Dolphins can take. 

Week 7 might be a battle of 1-5 teams who are at the bottom of the NFL, but it could have big implications for these two franchises too being in a similar spot. Both teams need to see something this Sunday, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if Miami made a change after if the Browns can protect home field in a convincing way. 

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