Browns promote Ben Bloom to run game coordinator

The Cleveland Browns promoted Ben Bloom to the position of run game coordinator on Monday.

The move comes after Bloom spent the 2020 season as a senior defensive assistant on head coach Kevin Stefanski’s staff.

A 12-year coaching veteran, Bloom started his NFL coaching career with the Browns in 2009 as a team operations assistant/quality control coach. He spent two seasons in Cleveland before moving on to the Dallas Cowboys, where stayed for nine years, including serving as defensive line coach in 2014 and 2015, and as linebackers coach in 2018 and 2019.

Last season, Bloom was part of a defensive coaching staff that helped the Browns finish at No. 9 in the NFL in run defense, allowing 110.8 rushing yards a game, down from 144.7 yards per game in 2019. It may not have always been pretty on defense, but the Browns did limit opposing teams to less than 100 rushing yards eight times in 2020, according to the team’s website.

Bloom was in charge of putting together the run defense each week, defensive coordinator Joe Woods told clevelandbrowns.com:

“Ben put together all of our run game game plans. He presented that to us as a staff and he presented it to the team. He’s very detailed, very thorough and knows exactly what you need to do to stop an opponent. I’m happy for him and I’m glad we have a chance to keep him for at least another year.

“I feel like we have a staff that works really well together in terms of sharing ideas and being open to listening to other guys’ suggestions. For Ben, I feel like he was really in this role already. Now he’ll get some recognition for exactly what he does, which I feel is important for him and his career.”

With the Browns expected to take a hard look at improving the defense this offseason through free agency and the draft, keeping the coaching staff together will be beneficial, according to Woods:

“The carryover with what we’re teaching guys in the classroom, our game day adjustments and having the same guys being able to communicate and get better from the previous year is big for us.”

In addition to his work with the Browns and Cowboys, Bloom has coaching experience at the college level, having worked as a defensive line/graduate assistant at Tufts University from 2005 to 2007, and as an assistant defensive line coach at Harvard in 2008, which featured current Cleveland general manager Andrew Berry as a starter in the secondary.