'Crazy' Bill Callahan a 'wizard' for Cleveland Browns offensive linemen

BEREA – Wyatt Teller stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 315 pounds. Bill Callahan stands just under a foot shorter than that.

The Browns' right guard, though, isn't about to pick a fight with the man who towers over the team's offensive line room.

“What’s crazy is, is he’s this little guy that will get in your face," Teller said earlier this week. "You’re 6-foot-5, 315 pounds. Not a lot of people will pick a fight with you but, I swear, he’ll come out there and slap you right in the face. He’s not afraid of anybody, and I’m thankful for that."

Callahan, on Saturday, gave a mild rebuttal to Teller's description of him.

"No, no. He embellishes a little bit,"' Callahan said with a chuckle. "We all know Wyatt, right?"

What the Browns' offensive line coach didn't do is necessarily dismiss the premise outright. Callahan can see the weird juxtaposition between a man of his stature being put in charge of a room filled with men who look like Teller.

"It's crazy, isn't it?" Callahan said. "I'm really short. I don't weigh a lot. So coaching these guys is different."

Different, not necessarily difficult. At least, it's not difficult for a man who went into coaching more than four decades ago with the hopes of coaching the actual position he played, which was quarterback.

Now, 42 years after he started that career as a graduate assistant for Mike White at Illinois, Callahan has emerged as one of the top offensive line coaches in the NFL. It's given a massive stature in the game for a man who's physical stature belies such a position.

And, to Browns offensive linemen, it's given Callahan a massive amount of respect.

"It's been awesome to have Bill," right tackle Jack Conklin said. "Being able to come here and have him as a teacher, it made my game take it to the next level. He's been around so long, he's such a craftsman in how he breaks everything down. Literally I can say everyday there's something I pick up from him.

"I think the cohesion he brings to the room, sometimes he's kind of a wizard with that. He gets us angry at him, I think sometimes it's on purpose to bring us all together, and it's just everything. He's always thinking. It's great to have him."

That's why Kevin Stefanski made sure Callahan was one of the first individuals he added to the coaching staff when he was hired as Browns coach in 2020. That's even with absolutely no previous contact with him before joining up with him in Cleveland.

The connection came through former Vikings coach Brad Childress. Childress, who gave Stefanski his first NFL position in 2006, was on the same Illinois staff on which Callahan made his debut.

"It is a big hire," Stefanski said. "As you guys know, Coach Callahan means a lot to our success and means a lot to me on a personal and professional level. It was a big deal when we were able to get him because there are certain years that a Bill Callahan is not available, based on he has a job. In that case, I was fortunate enough that he was looking for one.”

Callahan has overseen, when its been healthy, one of the best lines in the NFL. It's a line in which the Browns have invested in heavily in the past three years, including a first-round pick spent on left tackle Jedrick Wills, contract extensions to guards Joel Bitonio and Teller and signing Conklin as a free agent.

That's two multi-time All-Pros, as well as a guard who's regarded as one of the best currently in the league to never have earned that honor. Yet, to listen to them, they're quick to attribute a lot of their successes as a group to the gray-haired man at the front of the room.

The gray-haired man who's not afraid to stand up to a football player significantly bigger than him and aggressively tell him where the player went wrong.

“Still crazy, but one of my favorite guys," Teller said. "Bill is an absolute great coach. He’ll let you know when you did something wrong, but he’s going to applaud you when you do something right. I’m thankful for that because some coaches can be so focused on the perfection of it that they just stay on it, but he builds you back up, and I’m thankful for it.”

Callahan's career has taken him to a number of different places, including full-time head-coaching with the NFL's Oakland Raiders and the University of Nebraska, plus an interim head-coaching stint in Washington. Those stops have brought him near the mountaintop — reaching the Super Bowl with the Raiders — and to the bottom, as he ended up fired from both full-time positions.

As an offensive line coach, specifically as one of the pre-eminent wide-zone scheme coaches, Callahan's reputation is impeccable, and it gives power to the words he imparts on his linemen, no matter the octaves with which he delivers those words.

"I believe players will listen to things that will help them have success," Callahan said. "As a coach, as you grow, you have more experience so you have more of a reserve of things you’ve experienced and done and changed. But most importantly, how you help a player, or tweak a player to fix him relative to what he needs help with is vitally important.

"So I think I come at it from a different viewpoint because I’m fortunate to have those experiences and really try to help them maybe alter something they’re doing to help them get better."

Contact Chris at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com.

On Twitter: @ceasterlingABJ

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Bill Callahan a 'wizard' for Cleveland Browns offensive linemen