Browns OC Alex Van Pelt hoping to avoid making Kevin Stefanski yell at his TV

Browns offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt is taking over the play-calling duties for Sunday’s wild-card matchup with the Steelers in Pittsburgh. Normally those duties fall upon head coach Kevin Stefanski, but the COVID-19 outbreak around Cleveland has forced the head man to miss the game.

Van Pelt feels like he’s ready to handle the job. He’s done it before, albeit not in Cleveland.

“Just try to do it as well as I can,” Van Pelt said in his Zoom session with the media this week. “I really don’t have an approach. Obviously, I have a good feel for Kevin and how he’s called it throughout the course of the season. I want to stay true to his beliefs in offense and I feel the same way. So obviously it’ll be a little bit different just because of the nature. Nobody calls it the same. But hopefully it’ll be very similar.”

Van Pelt then offered a lighter assessment of his goal for Sunday night,

“We’ve had a lot of success offensively, and my hope is at the end of the game there’s not too many times where he’s yelling at his TV going, ‘What the heck are you doing?’”

Van Pelt’s offense will be without Pro Bowl left guard Joel Bitonio and passing targets, TE Hunter Bryant and WR KhaDarel Hodge. It won’t be easy but the Browns still have some weapons at Van Pelt’s disposal in Nick Chubb, Jarvis Landry, Kareem Hunt and David Njoku.