Browns, Raiders Seek Interview With Rams’ Nate Scheelhaase as Coaching Carousel Turns Offense-First

Nate Scheelhaase spent much of last week preparing for the next round of the playoffs. At 35, the Los Angeles Rams pass-game coordinator is helping steer the NFL’s top offense through January, fresh off a wild-card win in which Matthew Stafford and Puka Nacua again lit up the stat sheet.

Now, while he scripts plays for a divisional-round game, Scheelhaase is also preparing for something else: job interviews with two of the league’s most restless franchises.

The Cleveland Browns and Las Vegas Raiders have requested permission to interview Scheelhaase for their vacant head-coaching positions, people familiar with the searches confirmed Jan. 11. Both teams fired their head coaches six days earlier. Both are coming off losing seasons. And both are turning to the same young offensive assistant tied to Sean McVay’s high-powered Rams in search of a reset.

A leaguewide turn toward young offensive candidates

The simultaneous pursuit underscores a broader shift across the league. Faced with broken offenses and years of churn on the sideline, owners in Cleveland and Las Vegas are looking to a mid-30s play designer — not a veteran retread — as a potential answer.

The Raiders’ search has the added dimension of a high-profile minority owner: Tom Brady, who is now formally involved in selecting the organization’s next coach and likely its next quarterback.

Raiders move on after 3-14 season

On Jan. 5, the Raiders announced they had “relieved Pete Carroll of his duties as head coach” after a 3-14 season, his first with the club. Carroll, 74, had been the oldest head coach in NFL history on opening day.

In Las Vegas, owner Mark Davis framed the move as part of a broader restructuring. In a statement, he said general manager John Spytek would “lead all football operations in close collaboration with Tom Brady, including the search for the club’s next head coach.” The change came after the Raiders finished with the league’s worst record and secured the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft.

The Raiders’ struggles under Carroll were stark. Las Vegas was outscored 432-241, dropped 10 straight games during one stretch and finished last in the AFC West. Quarterback Geno Smith, acquired in a reunion with his former Seattle coach, led the league with 17 interceptions.

The team’s lone bright spots were a handful of young building blocks: rookie running back Ashton Jeanty, who set a franchise rookie record with 1,321 yards from scrimmage; tight end Brock Bowers, who made the Pro Bowl; and edge rusher Maxx Crosby, who posted his fourth straight double-digit sack season.

The franchise has also cycled through coaches at an extraordinary rate. Carroll was the Raiders’ fourth head coach in five seasons, following Jon Gruden, Josh McDaniels and interim-turned-bridge coach Antonio Pierce. The next hire will be the team’s 15th since 2000.

Players have been left to adapt to the constant shift in leadership. “You have to be able to adapt for whoever is coming in the building,” Jeanty said after Carroll’s firing. He compared the situation to his college experience at Boise State, where he played for multiple staffs. “Whatever it takes to help us out to win more, I’m all for it.”

The environment offers both risk and opportunity for a candidate like Scheelhaase. The Raiders are expected to have more than $100 million in salary-cap space this offseason and hold the top pick, widely projected to be used on a quarterback. Defensive tackle Jonah Laulu called that draft position “definitely a win for us,” adding that whether the team keeps the pick or trades it, “whatever it takes to help us out to win more, I’m all for it.”

Cleveland’s vacancy comes with quarterback uncertainty

Cleveland’s opening presents a different kind of challenge.

Six hours after the Raiders’ move, the Browns dismissed Kevin Stefanski after a 5-12 finish, ending the tenure of the only coach of the Haslam ownership era to deliver multiple playoff appearances.

Stefanski, 43, left with a complex legacy. Hired in 2020, he compiled a 45-56 record and won the Associated Press NFL Coach of the Year award twice, in 2020 and 2023. He led the Browns to their first playoff win since the 1994 season. But Cleveland went 3-14 in 2024 and 5-12 in 2025, dragged down by an offense that ranked 31st in scoring and 30th in total yardage this season.

In a statement announcing the change, owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam praised Stefanski’s “leadership of the Cleveland Browns over the last six seasons” and called him “a good football coach and an even better person.” They added, “Our results over the last two seasons have not been satisfactory, and we believe a change at the head coaching position is necessary.”

The Browns’ defense remained one of the league’s best, allowing the fourth-fewest yards. Defensive end Myles Garrett set a single-season NFL record with 23 sacks. But a revolving door at quarterback left the unit overexposed.

Deshaun Watson, acquired in a 2022 trade and signed to a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract, re-ruptured his Achilles tendon and missed the entire 2025 season. Over three years in Cleveland, Watson has played just 19 games. The Browns still owe him roughly $92 million, limiting their flexibility under the salary cap and shaping any new coach’s job description.

“We’re capable of winning more than the games that we won,” cornerback Denzel Ward said after Stefanski’s firing. “Things are going to change and have to change. We got to find a way to get this thing rolling.”

Scheelhaase’s rapid rise under McVay

Against that backdrop, Scheelhaase’s résumé stands out. A former four-year starting quarterback at Illinois, he left college as the school’s all-time leader in total offense. He moved quickly into coaching, starting at Illinois as an analyst and running backs coach before joining Iowa State, where he worked his way up to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. The Cyclones’ scoring offense improved in his first year calling plays.

McVay hired Scheelhaase in 2024 as a passing-game specialist and elevated him to pass-game coordinator a year later. With Scheelhaase in that role this season, the Rams led the NFL in total offense, passing yards and points. Stafford topped the league with 4,707 passing yards and 46 touchdown passes, while Nacua caught an NFL-best 129 passes for 1,715 yards.

League rules allow assistant coaches on playoff teams to conduct only virtual interviews during the early January window, so any conversations with the Browns and Raiders would take place by videoconference until the Rams’ season ends.

Brady’s unusual role in the Raiders’ rebuild

In Las Vegas, the calculus now includes Brady. The former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, whose minority ownership interest in the Raiders was approved by fellow owners in October 2024, is working alongside Spytek on coaching and personnel decisions.

Spytek, a former Buccaneers executive and one-time college teammate of Brady’s at Michigan, has said accountability for the Raiders’ 3-14 season “should start and stop with me,” but Davis has made clear he expects Brady’s voice to carry weight in shaping the team’s future.

The arrangement is unusual. Brady also serves as a national television analyst, and the league imposed restrictions on his access to team facilities and production meetings to ease concerns about competitive balance. His dual roles nonetheless give him both public visibility and behind-the-scenes influence at a moment when the Raiders are choosing a head coach and, likely, a franchise quarterback.

What it signals about the NFL coaching carousel

For Scheelhaase, the decisions in Cleveland and Las Vegas will be among the first major dominoes of this year’s coaching carousel. If he lands one of the jobs, he would join a growing group of young offensive coaches asked to repair not just schemes, but identities for organizations long defined by short tenures and false starts.

If he does not, the parallel pursuits by the Browns and Raiders still offer a snapshot of where the league is headed: toward younger, offense-first leaders, even in places where the deepest questions have less to do with play design than with ownership, front-office stability and the most expensive position on the field.