Brian Hartline’s One Year with the Cleveland Browns
Brian Hartline signed with the Cleveland Browns on March 10, 2015. He caught 46 passes for 523 yards and two touchdowns, broke his collarbone in December, and was released the following May. One season. That’s the whole Browns chapter – and it almost didn’t happen at all.
Before Cleveland: Six Years Making Catches Nobody Else Made
Most people who search “Brian Hartline Browns” today know him first as a coach. He ran the Ohio State wide receiver room for years, turned it into the most productive pipeline in college football, and was named head coach at the University of South Florida in December 2025. The playing career is the backstory. But it was a real one.
The Miami Dolphins drafted him in the fourth round of the 2009 NFL Draft, 108th overall, out of Ohio State. He was 6-foot-2, ran clean routes, and didn’t fumble – three times in six seasons with Miami, total. In 2012 he set the Dolphins’ single-game receiving record with 253 yards on 12 catches against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 4, the highest single-game total in the NFL that season. He followed it with 1,016 yards and 76 catches in 2013, both career highs. Back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. Only eight Dolphins receivers had hit that milestone before him.
Then 2014 happened. He caught 39 passes for 474 yards and two scores. Not catastrophic, but enough for Miami to decide $5.9 million was too much to pay him in 2015. They released him February 27.
Why the Browns Signed Him – and Why He Said Yes
The Browns’ receiver room that offseason was a problem. Josh Gordon had been suspended for the entire 2015 season – his second major violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy. Andrew Hawkins was solid but not a genuine number one. The team had publicly committed to adding playmakers, and here was a 28-year-old with consecutive 1,000-yard seasons available on the open market.
Other teams called. The New England Patriots showed interest. The Chicago Bears got a visit. Hartline took his time. He chose Cleveland, and the reason he gave wasn’t sentiment about coming home to Ohio, though he grew up in Canton and played at GlenOak High School. It was coach Mike Pettine. “He’s a man’s man,” Hartline said in his introductory conference call. “Straight to the point. Loves football. Wants to win.” The contract was two years, $6 million – $3 million per season, team-friendly structure that gave Cleveland an easy out if things went wrong.
They went wrong. Not because of Hartline.
What the 2015 Season Actually Looked Like
The Browns started 2015 with Josh McCown at quarterback. Then Johnny Manziel. Then Austin Davis. Then McCown again. Coordinating an offense behind that rotation is genuinely difficult, and Hartline was the closest thing Cleveland had to a reliable target through most of it.
Week 1, with Manziel in relief of McCown, Hartline made a one-handed grab on his knees and falling sideways that had no business being caught. It was Week 1 of September and already the catch of the year conversation. He played through a thigh bruise for stretches of the season. In a December blowout loss to the Cincinnati Bengals – 37-3, a game the Browns had no business being in – Hartline led Cleveland with 8 catches for 83 yards and then declined to speak to the media afterward. “I want to keep a job,” he told reporters, which was equal parts dark humor and genuine frustration. He had 38 catches for 416 yards at that point in the year. The team was 2-10.
Three weeks later, in a 24-10 win over the San Francisco 49ers, he broke his collarbone. Season over. Final line: 46 receptions, 523 yards, 2 touchdowns, 12 games, 4 starts. His 2015 numbers were better than his 2014 numbers in Miami, which almost nobody mentioned when the Browns cut him six months later.
Where He Fit in the Offense – and What He Was Worth to the Locker Room
The plan coming in was a two-receiver look with Hartline and Andrew Hawkins. Hartline could work outside and in the slot, ran deep routes without telegraphing them, and was strong enough on short crossing routes in traffic that defensive coordinators had to account for him underneath. Hawkins set career highs in 2014 with 63 catches and 824 yards. On paper the pairing made sense.
In practice, the Browns’ offensive line gave quarterbacks almost no time, the running game was inconsistent, and Cleveland finished 3-13 – worst record in the NFL. Hartline was one of two receivers still standing in that December Bengals game. Taylor Gabriel was the other. The depth behind them was thin the whole year.
Coach Pettine was direct about what Hartline meant beyond the stat line. “This is a guy that’s a leader,” Pettine said after the collarbone injury ended his season. “He’s a leader in the locker room, he’s a leader in the meeting rooms, he’s a leader on the practice field and then on game day, he’s a guy that wants the ball.” Bleacher Report noted after his release that Hartline was one of the few players that year actively pushing teammates to act professionally – Corey Coleman, the receiver Cleveland would draft first overall in 2016, specifically said he’d looked forward to learning from him.
The 2016 Draft Made the Decision for Cleveland
The Browns cut Hartline on May 23, 2016. The reasoning was straightforward: they used their first-round pick (15th overall) on Baylor wide receiver Corey Coleman and then took four more pass-catchers before the draft ended – Ricardo Louis in the fourth round, Seth DeValve in the fourth, Jordan Payton in the fifth, and Rashard Higgins in the fifth. Keeping a 29-year-old veteran at $3 million while also trying to develop five new additions made no sense financially or practically. Releasing him cleared $2.5 to $3 million in cap space.
Andrew Hawkins survived the cut. Hartline didn’t. No other NFL team signed him. He didn’t formally announce a retirement – there was no press conference, no farewell statement. He just stopped playing, and by early 2017 he was on the Ohio State staff as a quality control coach. Seven NFL seasons, 344 career receptions, 4,766 yards, 14 touchdowns, and one year in Cleveland that was better than the record it ended with.
Career Numbers, Put in Context
He played 104 games total, started 73. His yards-per-catch average across his career was 13.9, which ranks fifth among Ohio State receivers who played in the NFL – a list that now includes Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Chris Olave, and Marvin Harrison Jr., all of whom Hartline later coached. He never made a Pro Bowl. That’s the honest summary of his ceiling as a player.
The Dolphins single-game record – 253 yards against Arizona on October 14, 2012 – still stands. It’s worth pausing on that for a second. Twelve catches, 253 yards, one touchdown, in a loss. He called it “bittersweet” at the time because Miami lost 24-21. The record stayed. He averaged over 21 yards per catch that afternoon against a Cardinals defense that finished the 2012 season ranked 11th in the league against the pass. That wasn’t a stat-padding game against a weak secondary.
His 344 career receptions rank sixth among former Buckeye receivers in NFL history. His 73 starts rank fifth. Neither number reflects a journeyman – he was a dependable starter for most of his career, on two different franchises, with quarterbacks ranging from Chad Henne to Ryan Tannehill to, in his final season, a three-man rotation in Cleveland that included Johnny Manziel. The fact that his 2015 production was higher than his 2014 production under those conditions says something real about his consistency, though it didn’t save his job.
From Getting Cut to Coaching the Best Receiver Room in College Football
Hartline joined Ohio State as a quality control coach in January 2017. Twelve months later, interim WR coach after the firing of Zach Smith. By December 2018, the position was made permanent. From there the trajectory was fast.
In 2020, 247Sports named him National Recruiter of the Year. That same year the AFCA named him to its “35 Under 35” Leadership Institute. The receivers he developed at Ohio State became a running list: Garrett Wilson (first round, 2022), Chris Olave (first round, 2022), Jameson Williams (first round, 2022), Jaxon Smith-Njigba (first round, 2023), Emeka Egbuka (first round, 2025), Marvin Harrison Jr. (first overall pick, 2024). Six first-round receivers developed by one position coach. That’s not a coincidence of talent – Ohio State’s receiver recruiting was good before Hartline, but the development pipeline became a different thing under him.
He was promoted to passing game coordinator in January 2021, then to full offensive coordinator in 2023. Chip Kelly came in as OC for the 2024 season and Hartline moved to co-coordinator – the one moment in his coaching career where the trajectory slowed. Ohio State won the national championship that year anyway. Kelly left for the Las Vegas Raiders, and Hartline was OC again for 2025. On December 3, 2025, he signed to become head coach at the University of South Florida, starting with the 2026 season. His brother Mike, a former NFL quarterback, is the quarterbacks coach there. He was allowed to finish coaching Ohio State’s College Football Playoff run before officially transitioning.
The line from a broken collarbone on a 3-13 Browns team to a head coaching job at a Power Four-adjacent program with a new on-campus stadium being built – that’s a ten-year arc that most players who got cut at 29 don’t complete. Hartline did, and the Cleveland year is part of it, even if it wasn’t the part that built his reputation.
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