Callie Brownson's daily to-do list as the Browns' Chief of Staff has had no limitations since she joined the team in 2020.
She's planned and ran practices on the fields at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus. She's directed the football operations video department in coordinating camera placement and angles. She's constantly communicated with the strength and conditioning and nutrition teams to stay up to date on players' workouts and diets.
"The biggest piece of this role is that I'm an extension of (head coach) Kevin Stefanski," Brownson said. "When he got here, he created this vision of how he wanted things done. Everything from how the building looked to what our message to the players was and who we were going to be as a football team.
"I got to hone in on his goal and vision for how he wanted this to play out. I took that and bridged the gap to all of our football ops departments."
Brownson has, quite literally, done it all when it comes to coaching tasks.
Now, she'll be doing a little bit more.
Brownson was officially named the assistant wide receivers coach in February when the Browns announced coaching changes for the 2022 season. She'll still be Chief of Staff but will now also assist wide receivers coach/pass game coordinator Chad O'Shea in carrying out the day-to-day coaching tasks at the position.
Time management will be off the essence for Brownson, but that's been the name of her game already for the last two years.
"It's going to be on me to be very diligent and thorough," she said. "After two years, I really understand what a day entails in the offseason, regular season, training camp — all of it. I'm very well-versed in how to structure the day."
Stefanski agreed, and he made that apparent when he discussed Brownson's development in his statement about the hires.
"Callie's done a great job in her role, and now going into Year 3, she definitely has the capacity to add more responsibilities to the offensive side of the ball," Stefanski said. "She's been a utility player for us in the past and filled in for coaches on gameday, so this is just another step in her career. Coach O'Shea does an awesome job of mentoring coaches in that room, so I know Chad is excited to get to work closer with Callie."
Brownson already has a close bond with O'Shea, who was also hired nearly two weeks apart from her in 2020. O'Shea helped Brownson move into her apartment when she arrived in Cleveland, and he's developed a strong reputation within the coaching staff as someone who cares about the development of other coaching assistants.
When Stefanski met with Brownson and told her she'd be receiving an assistant role under O'Shea, Brownson couldn't hide her excitement.
"Inside, I was like, 'Yes,'" she said. "We have a great rapport. It's a very natural relationship already and we know each other really well. We're already diving deep into it. I couldn't ask to be in a better room."
Brownson's gameday tasks shouldn't be significantly affected in her new role, either. She already assisted O'Shea with wide receiver substitutions, while most of her other duties revolved around assisting Stefanski and keeping him alert of activity on the sideline.
She has also garnered plenty of experience as a normal position coach. She's been an interim position coach four times with the Browns, starting in Week 12 of 2020 when she was interim TEs coach against the Jaguars — she also became the first female to hold the role of a positional coach in NFL history. She coached in place of O'Shea in Week 17 of 2020, when O'Shea was out due to COVID-19 protocols and was again the TEs coach in the Wild Card round over the Steelers. She also coached the RBs in Week 15 against the Raiders in 2021.
"It's not a total culture shock for me to take on something else (new)," she said. "It should be a seamless, non-distractive step up."
