CLEVELAND — Callie Brownson’s journey to the National Football League and the Cleveland Browns started with one simple question.
While coaching another sport entirely at Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax, Virginia, Brownson was given the opportunity to coach the game she has loved since childhood: football, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“I was in my early 20s and I was coaching high school softball,” Brownson told 3News sports director Jim Donovan in an exclusive one-on-one interview. “The high school football coach actually approached me in the hallway and said, ‘Hey, I heard you play and you’re coaching a sport. Have you ever thought about coaching football?’
“I kind of fell into that societal thinking of, ‘Women don’t coach football. What do you mean?’ I didn’t even see that as an opportunity, and he invited me out that spring to workouts and ended up giving me a spot on the staff that fall, and that’s how it began for me.”
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Although there was some skepticism on the part of the players, it took little time for Brownson to earn their attention and respect on the practice field.
“I’m a very hands on coach,” Brownson said. “I was with the DBs, and I was putting my hands on them, showing them how to jam, and right of the bat, they were like, ‘Whoa, what a second!’ I always had confidence that I wanted to be there. I knew that I was there to make them better.”
After an eight-year playing career as a safety, running back and slot receiver for the D.C. Divas of the Women’s Football Alliance, as well as a gold medal winner with Team USA at the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championships in Finland in 2013 and Vancouver in 2017, Brownson landed her first NFL coaching job.
A product of the NFL’s first “Women’s Careers in Football Forum,” Brownson was a college/professional personnel scouting intern for the New York Jets during the 2017 season. In 2018, she was a coaching intern, and later, an offensive quality control coach at Dartmouth College for Buddy Teevens.
“I give so much to Coach Teevens and the opportunity he gave me because he didn’t just hire for a job,” Brownson said. “He opened it all up for me, as involved as I wanted to get on the field, as involved as I wanted to get in the recruiting and operations. He trusted me enough to let me get my hands a little dirty.”
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It was at the Women’s Careers in Football Forum that Brownson met Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott, and after serving as an intern in training camp, she was brought onto the staff full-time.
Now, Brownson finds herself filling a role that Browns coach Kevin Stefanski had, chief of staff, and her goal remains the same now that it was when she started the journey six years ago.
“It has happened quickly, yes, but it goes back to the people I’ve been around and that’s why it’s happened the way it has,” Brownson said.
“It’s very easy to gain the trust of your fellow players and your fellow coaches if you’re somebody who can help the team win, help make them better in any capacity, help make their job easier. It’s very easy to gain their respect. I never felt defeated. I knew it was going to take a little time, but if I stayed true to why I was there, they’d see that as well.”