Todd Monken – From Division III Quarterback to NFL Head Coach
Todd Monken was born in Wheaton, Illinois, on February 5, 1966. His father Bob coached high school football at Lake Park High School in Roselle. His cousin Jeff Monken coaches Army. His younger brother Ted was a head high school coach in Illinois. Football wasn’t something Todd Monken chose – it was basically the family business.
He played quarterback at Wheaton North High School, then tried to walk on at Western Illinois before transferring first to College of DuPage, where he played outfield on the baseball team, and then to Knox College in Galesburg. At Knox, he started for two seasons under Randy Oberembt, earned All-Midwest Conference honors, and finished his senior year in 1988 ranked first in the conference in pass attempts, completions, and completion percentage. Division III, yes – but he was the best quarterback in his conference. He graduated with a degree in economics in 1989 and is now in the Knox College Athletic Hall of Fame.
He and his wife Terri have one son, Travis. That’s the personal file, more or less. Monken has never been someone the press builds profiles around – he spent thirty-plus years as an assistant and coordinator, mostly invisible to casual fans until Georgia started winning national championships with his offense running the show.
Graduate Assistant to NFL Sideline: The Long Build (1989–2006)
Monken’s first two coaching jobs were graduate assistant positions – Grand Valley State from 1989 to 1990, then Notre Dame from 1991 to 1992 under Tom Beck. Then Eastern Michigan, where he started as defensive backs coach under Ron Cooper in 1993 and eventually worked up to offensive coordinator by 1998. Seven years at one program, multiple roles, no famous names. That’s a long time to spend building without getting noticed.
Louisiana Tech in 2000 as running backs coach, wide receivers in 2001. Oklahoma State in 2002, still working receivers. He followed Les Miles to LSU in 2005 and 2006, where he helped develop Dwayne Bowe and Buster Davis – both first-round picks in the 2007 draft. That LSU connection opened the NFL door. In 2007, the Jacksonville Jaguars hired him as wide receivers coach. He stayed four seasons. In 2007, receiver Reggie Williams caught 10 touchdown passes – a Jaguars single-season record.
Oklahoma State’s Offense Sets Records, Then He Goes to Southern Miss
Mike Gundy brought Monken back to Oklahoma State in February 2011 as offensive coordinator. The Cowboys’ offense finished second nationally that year with 48.7 points per game. Brandon Weeden threw for 4,727 yards and 37 touchdowns – second and fourth in the country, respectively. Justin Blackmon won back-to-back Biletnikoff Awards. Both Weeden and Blackmon went in the first round of the 2012 draft. Oklahoma State’s offense set school records for total yards, passing yards, completion percentage, points, and passing touchdowns across those two seasons.
Then Monken took the Southern Miss job in January 2013. The program he inherited had just gone 0-12. He won two games in 2013, four in 2014, and nine in 2015 – when the Golden Eagles won the Conference USA West division and appeared in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Three years, one full rebuild. There’s a detail from that period that doesn’t show up in any stats column: Monken paid for tailored suits for every graduating senior on his team. His stated reasoning was that he was coaching people, not just players. Whether or not that reads as charming or performative probably depends on whether you got a suit.
Three Seasons in Tampa Bay – and One Problem the Offense Couldn’t Fix
Monken left Southern Miss in January 2016 to become offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers under Dirk Koetter. Over his three seasons there, the Buccaneers led the NFL in total passing yards with 14,130. His 2018 offense finished first in the league in passing (5,125 yards), third in total offense (6,681 yards), and set franchise records for total yards (6,648), passing touchdowns (36), total touchdowns (49), and points scored (396). Mike Evans made the Pro Bowl twice and cleared 1,000 receiving yards in all three of Monken’s seasons.
The defense gave up the second-most points in the league in 2018. Koetter was fired. Monken was not retained by incoming head coach Bruce Arians. So a coordinator who just ran the best passing offense in the NFL was out of a job, which tells you something about how head coach changes work regardless of unit-level performance.
Cleveland 2019: Baker Mayfield, Nick Chubb, and a Staff That Didn’t Survive January
The Cleveland Browns hired Monken as offensive coordinator in January 2019 under Freddie Kitchens. The Browns that year ranked 22nd in points per game and 22nd in yards per game. Nick Chubb ran for 1,494 yards – second in the NFL – and earned his first Pro Bowl. Baker Mayfield threw for 3,827 yards and 22 touchdowns, his best single-season yardage total. Odell Beckham Jr. cleared 1,000 receiving yards. Jarvis Landry finished with 1,174 and six touchdowns.
The team missed the playoffs and the entire staff was fired. Monken’s offense wasn’t the reason Cleveland lost games that year – the bigger problems were elsewhere – but coordinators don’t survive head coach firings regardless of fault. He was out of Cleveland after one season. He wouldn’t return as head coach until seven years later.
Georgia: Two National Titles and an Offense Nobody Saw Coming
Kirby Smart hired Monken in January 2020. The first season was messy – three different starting quarterbacks due to injuries and opt-outs, the first time Georgia had done that in 15 years. The offense wasn’t clean, but the team finished in the top 10 of the final CFP rankings and won the Peach Bowl.
2021 was different. Georgia’s offense ranked ninth nationally in points per game (38.6), fourth in yards per play (7.0), and seventh in total first downs. The Bulldogs beat Alabama in the national championship game – Georgia’s first title since 1980. Then they did it again in 2022. That season, Georgia led the nation in total net yards (7,517) and total points (616). Back-to-back, 29-1 over two seasons.
The players Monken developed at Georgia who ended up in the NFL: tight end Brock Bowers, running back James Cook, wide receiver George Pickens, offensive tackles Broderick Jones and Amarius Mims – all first-round picks. That’s not a coincidence of talent. Georgia has always had talent. The development and the scheme were what made those players’ draft grades jump.
He left for Baltimore after the 2022 season. Smart replaced him. Georgia has not won a national championship since.
Baltimore Ravens: A Historic Offense and One Loss That Won’t Go Away
Monken joined the Ravens as offensive coordinator in 2023. His first season: the Ravens finished 13-4, earned the AFC’s top seed, Lamar Jackson won his second NFL MVP, and the offense ranked fourth in scoring and sixth in total yards. They lost to Kansas City 17-10 in the AFC Championship Game. Monken was widely criticized for abandoning the run in that game – the Ravens’ biggest offensive weapon all season was their ground attack, and in the fourth quarter trailing by a touchdown, they passed. It didn’t work. Whether that was the right call in theory is genuinely debatable; the outcome is not.
In 2024, Baltimore’s offense was statistically historic. The Ravens led the NFL in total offense at 424.9 yards per game, rushing offense at 187.6 yards per game, red zone touchdown rate at 74.2 percent, and yards per play at 6.8. They became the first team in NFL history to record both 4,000 passing yards (4,035) and 3,000 rushing yards (3,189) in the same season. Twelve players on that offense made the Pro Bowl over Monken’s three years, including Tyler Linderbaum, Zay Flowers, and Patrick Ricard.
The Ravens signed him to a contract extension in January 2025. One year later, the Cleveland Browns hired him away as their head coach.
What Monken Actually Runs on Offense
The lazy answer is “Air Raid,” because Monken worked at Oklahoma State during Mike Gundy’s spread-offense era. The accurate answer is that he doesn’t have one system – he has a framework that adapts to personnel. At Tampa Bay, the offense was heavily pass-oriented because the roster was built that way. At Georgia, he ran a pro-style attack with elements of RPO and play-action. At Baltimore, he built around Lamar Jackson’s legs first and constructed the passing game around what that created. The 2024 Ravens had more rushing yards than any team in the league while also throwing for 4,000 yards. That’s not an Air Raid offense. That’s a coordinator who looks at what he has and builds something that fits.
In a 2023 presentation at the Harbaugh Coaching Academy, Monken listed “QB off-schedule explosives” as one of the primary factors in offensive success – meaning plays that happen when the quarterback creates something outside the designed structure of the play. He’s been consistent about this across multiple stops: if your quarterback can move, you design around that. If he can’t, you design around what he can do. “One of the things that our staff, including myself, have been able to do is take advantage of what a player can do and not what they can’t do,” he said during his Browns introductory press availability in January 2026.
That philosophy matters a lot in Cleveland right now, where the quarterback room heading into the 2026 season includes Shedeur Sanders, Deshaun Watson, and Dillon Gabriel – three players with different skill sets and sharply different levels of current viability.
Cleveland Browns, 2026: The Rebuild He’s Inheriting
The Browns fired Kevin Stefanski in January 2026 after back-to-back losing seasons – 8-26 over the final two years of his tenure. Cleveland’s 2025 offense ranked 30th in the NFL, averaging 16.4 points and 281.8 yards per game. The Deshaun Watson contract – three first-round picks plus a fully guaranteed $230 million, signed in March 2022 – is still bleeding the roster. Watson has played 19 games since joining the Browns, sustained two Achilles tears, and carries a 33.1 Total QBR since arriving in Cleveland, which would rank last among qualifying starters. He’ll earn $46 million in 2026 regardless.
Monken was hired January 28, 2026. He was not the top name on most lists – ESPN reported he had been widely expected to follow John Harbaugh to New York as the Giants’ offensive coordinator if nothing else materialized. The Browns’ search lost several candidates before it came down to Monken and former defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz. Monken got the job. Fox Sports reporter Henry McKenna put him and GM Andrew Berry on a hot seat before Monken had coached a single snap, noting that a poor first season could cost both their jobs.
The offensive line was overhauled this offseason. The Browns acquired guard Elgton Jenkins, tackle Tytus Howard, and guard Zion Johnson, then added draft picks Spencer Fano, Austin Barber, and center Parker Brailsford. The receiving corps still needs work. The quarterback situation has no clean answer. Sanders started seven games in 2025, went 3-4, threw the most interceptions in the NFL (10) during that stretch, and posted the fifth-lowest QBR in the era among quarterbacks with 200-plus attempts. He’s a year into his career. He was also, at moments, clearly capable of something.
Monken has declined to name a starter. “I’m not there yet, so I can’t say,” he said in May. “We’ve been on the field three days.” Whether that’s genuine competition or a polite way of saying he hasn’t decided yet is hard to tell from the outside. What’s not hard to tell: the Browns’ offense needs to go from 30th to functional in one offseason, with a roster that has salary cap problems and a quarterback room that has no proven commodity. He turned a 0-12 Southern Miss program into a bowl team. He helped Georgia win two straight national championships. He built a historically great offense in Baltimore. None of that guarantees anything in Cleveland, but the track record is real.
Coaching Record and Key Stats by Stop
As head coach at Southern Miss: 2013 (0-12 inherited, finished 1-11), 2014 (3-9), 2015 (9-5, Conference USA West title, Heart of Dallas Bowl). Overall record: 13-24. As offensive coordinator, a sampling of what his units produced: Oklahoma State 2011-12, second nationally in scoring at 48.7 PPG; Tampa Bay 2018, first in the NFL in passing yards; Cleveland 2019, 22nd in points and yards; Georgia 2021-22, consecutive national championships, first in the nation in total yards (7,517) in 2022; Baltimore 2024, first in NFL in total offense (424.9 YPG), rushing offense (187.6 YPG), and the only team in history with 4,000 passing and 3,000 rushing yards in one season.
The 2019 Cleveland number looks odd next to everything else. The honest explanation is that the roster was a mess and Kitchens was calling plays – not Monken. That fact is often omitted in how that season gets summarized, though it doesn’t fully resolve the tension of having Chubb and Beckham and still ranking 22nd in the league.
Comments