While Michael Bearden was helping prepare the Notre Dame Fighting Irish for the 2024 National Championship, he received a call from Tommy Rees.
The two had not overlapped while at Notre Dame but had met through the interview process for Bearden's position with the Fighting Irish in early 2023. They crossed paths at different events in the years following, and their paths were about to cross once again.
This time, Rees was inquiring about Bearden's interest in the Browns' Bill Willis Coaching Fellowship. While Bearden wasn't looking for a new opportunity at the time, he listened. Bearden said Rees acknowledged the stakes of the game just days away, and while they discussed the fellowship, gave him time to focus solely on the national championship before diving into the potential of a new position.
"I really took a second to kind of step back and thought this could be a really big opportunity for me to be able to make the jump that I want to for my career, to be in the NFL and just learn," Bearden said.
He conducted some research of his own on the position and through the interview process learned what the fellowship entailed with the Browns. Following the national championship, Bearden went through the interview process and was selected as the fourth recipient of the Bill Wills Coaching Fellowship with the Browns.
"Michael has been outstanding," head coach Kevin Stefanski said. "Just in the few meetings that we've already had together, I've seen how intelligent he is and how hard he's working. I know that job well when it comes to quality control. There's a lot of work that goes into it, and none of it is glorious, and he's doing a really nice job. And you can tell this kid knows how to work."
The Browns created the Bill Willis Coaching Fellowship in 2020 to provide opportunities for a rising minority coach with a focus on the offensive side of the ball.
The fellowship honors Bill Willis, who helped break the color barrier in the NFL and played for the Browns from 1946-1953. Alongside Browns teammate and legend Marion Motley, Willis became one of the first two African American professional football players in the modern era. Willis played with the Browns from 1946-53 and was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977.
Since its creation in 2020, the Browns have had four coaches participate in the fellowship.
"I'm really proud of the success of this fellowship," Stefanski said. "It's something that we set out to do as an organization, and really, I give credit to Dee and Jimmy (Haslam) and how they've led this organization to be at the forefront of giving people opportunities. This is another example of an opportunity that we're giving to people, and through our process, we're finding really special candidates. Then we have the ability to develop young coaches, young minority coaches on the offensive side of the ball, which everybody has identified as something that we have to do better as a league."
Bearden joined the Browns coaching staff in January 2025 just as the offensive staff began to take shape under offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. As a group, they are starting from scratch to build what they want the Browns offense to look like in 2025.
"That's been cool for me because it's helped my learning process, and I'm a part of the initial conversations of what these plays look like, what this is going to look like," Bearden said. "And so, I don't feel like I'm behind. I feel like I'm a big part of that and even have a say whether it's how we want to set up for certain things to look or how projects are going to go for me. So, that's been really helpful to be a part of it. I feel like I got in at the right time, like I don't feel like I'm behind at all. I feel like I'm learning a lot."
Bearden's love for the game of football began when he was young, waking up early to watch games every Saturday and Sunday during the fall. He would flip in between channels when commercials came on to watch another game happening simultaneously. Bearden strived to watch as much football as he could to ingest as much information about the game as possible.
He played high school football, then pursued his college degree at Northwestern. While coaching was not originally a part of his plan, he earned an opportunity in his first year at Northwestern.
On his first day on campus, he met an individual who worked for the Northwestern Wildcats football team. On his second day, Northwestern held a job fair and he secured a job as a student assistant for the football team, specifically working on coach's video. He then earned another opportunity to take on a bigger role with the football team and was helping the quarterbacks during his sophomore year at Northwestern.
"That was kind of my intro, and I was enamored with everything. Just like the process of how a D1 program worked, what all went into it and everything," Bearden said. "So, it wasn't always the plan, but I feel like I kept sports in my path and football in my path, and it's something I'd love to do. And when the opportunity to coach presented itself, I just jumped on it. As the process went on, I truly fell in love with it."
After graduating from Northwestern, he went to UCLA to serve in a volunteer role and grew into a quality control coach. He also gained experience working with special teams during his time at UCLA.
From there, he took an opportunity as a graduate assistant with Notre Dame, with the focus on the offensive side of the ball. In his two years at Notre Dame, he worked as the assistant wide receivers coach.
In his stops throughout college football, Bearden learned from a multitude of coaches who helped shape him into being a better football coach. Those lessons have stuck with him as he's made the jump to the NFL.
"I think just the biggest thing for me in doing all of this and in coaching is, where I started really helped show me that everybody in this building has such an important role to the success of the team, and to never take any person or position for granted. The people make everything in this business, and working with great people has really made my experience so fun," Bearden said. "So, that's kind of a big thing for me that I try to remind myself every day, and then just coming to work excited to learn every day is a really big thing for me."
Since the creation of the Bill Willis Coaching Fellowship in 2020, all three recipients have established careers in coaching and in the NFL. It was an important factor that Bearden took into consideration about the position knowing that there is an opportunity for growth both internally and externally.
"It's cool to see too, not only putting us in this position to give us an opportunity, but then these guys are turning it into jobs as quarterbacks coaches and as coordinators – which is a really big deal because those jobs are hard to come by," Bearden said. "And for me, that's something I want to do. I love coaching the quarterbacks and quarterback play, and that's somewhere I want to be. And so, seeing that trust put into them, like, all right, these guys work with the quarterbacks, do a good job and continue working with the quarterbacks, that's a really exciting opportunity."
Ashton Grant was the first-ever recipient of the fellowship and spent two years as a fellow from 2020-21. Following the fellowship, he was named the Browns offensive quality control coach in 2022 and then an offensive assistant/quarterbacks coach in 2023. He will now be the quarterbacks coach for the Patriots.
Israel Woolfork held the fellowship in 2022 before becoming the Cardinals' quarterbacks coach in 2023.
The most recent fellow, Nemo Washington, joined the Browns in 2023 as the recipient of the fellowship. He spent two seasons with the Browns and will now serve as the new offensive coordinator for Delaware State.
"I think so much of it is about opportunity, and I think our job within the scope of this is identifying those people and having a process that we go through to identify these candidates," Stefanski said. "These jobs are really, really, really competitive, and they're hard to get. We really trust in our process to identify candidates and then put them through an interview selection that makes it obvious to who these people should be. So, like Ashton, Israel, Nemo and now Mike Bearden, we've worked very hard to identify these young coaches in these roles, and then it's up to them to ultimately perform and get better in these roles with our help alongside them in their development."
