He Lost Three Bronze Turkey Games at Knox. Now He Coaches the Cleveland Browns.
On a Saturday in November 1987, a Knox College quarterback stood on the field at what is now Knosher Bowl and lost the Bronze Turkey game to Monmouth by a single point. Twenty-three to twenty-four.
He would play Monmouth twice more and lose both, 49-0 and 45-6. Three tries, no trophy.
Thirty-eight years later, on January 28, 2026, that quarterback was named head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
Todd Monken graduated from Knox College in 1989. He is the most successful football person ever produced by a school in this coverage area, and the path from a Galesburg liberal arts college to an NFL head coaching job took him thirty-seven years and thirteen jobs.
Part One: The quarterback who had to share
Monken did not arrive at Knox as a prize recruit. He grew up in Wheaton and played at Wheaton North, and by the account of his college coach, Randy Oberembt, he reached Galesburg by way of a walk-on stint at Western Illinois and a spell playing baseball at College of DuPage.
When he got to Knox, the quarterback job was taken.
Bob Monroe was already there and was regarded as the best quarterback in the Midwest Conference. What happened next is unusual enough that Knox still tells the story in its Hall of Fame citation: the coaching staff created a shared arrangement, and both quarterbacks accepted it — in the Hall of Fame’s phrasing — “with dignity and mutual respect.”
The annual passing records show exactly how it worked. Monroe led Knox in passing in 1986. Monken led in 1987. Monken led again in 1988.
That third year is the one that still sits in the record book.
1988
Monken threw 23 touchdown passes that season. Nobody at Knox has thrown more in a season since. He completed 218 of 358 attempts for 2,400 yards at a .609 clip — and led all of NCAA Division III in attempts, completions and completion percentage.
Two individual games from that autumn are still school records. On October 8 against Cornell College he completed 41 passes for 462 yards. On October 22 against Illinois College he threw 64 times. On September 17 against Beloit he threw five touchdown passes.
Across three years he went 336-for-581 for 3,927 yards and 38 touchdowns. He still holds the Knox career marks for completion percentage, passing efficiency, yards per attempt and most 300-yard games.
He was named a Pizza Hut Division III All-American and All-Midwest Conference quarterback. He lettered twice in baseball as an outfielder. He took a degree in economics. Oberembt says he played through a broken leg.
The Knox-Lombard Athletic Hall of Fame inducted him in 1998, with a scouting-report line worth quoting in full: “An erect quarterback in a confident/poised stance throwing a beautifully delivered spiral with pinpoint accuracy.”
Knox went 3-5-1, then 6-3, then 5-4 in his three seasons. Solid, unremarkable, entirely typical of a Division III programme in the late eighties.
And in three attempts at Monmouth, he never came closer than that one point.
Part Two: Thirty-seven years, thirteen jobs
The coaching career started the year after he graduated, as a graduate assistant at Grand Valley State. Then two years as a graduate assistant at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz.
Then Eastern Michigan, for seven seasons: defensive backs, then receivers, then offensive coordinator. Then Louisiana Tech. Then Oklahoma State, LSU, and a first NFL job with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2007.
| Years | Job |
|---|---|
| 1989-90 | Grand Valley State, graduate assistant |
| 1991-92 | Notre Dame, graduate assistant |
| 1993-99 | Eastern Michigan — DBs, then WRs, then offensive coordinator |
| 2000-01 | Louisiana Tech |
| 2002-04 | Oklahoma State, passing game coordinator |
| 2005-06 | LSU, passing game coordinator |
| 2007-10 | Jacksonville Jaguars, wide receivers |
| 2011-12 | Oklahoma State, offensive coordinator |
| 2013-15 | Southern Miss, head coach |
| 2016-18 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers, offensive coordinator |
| 2019 | Cleveland Browns, offensive coordinator |
| 2020-22 | Georgia, offensive coordinator |
| 2023-25 | Baltimore Ravens, offensive coordinator |
| 2026- | Cleveland Browns, head coach |
The Southern Miss years, which nearly ended it
His first head coaching job came in 2013, at a programme that had just gone 0-12.
Year one: 1-11. The first win did not arrive until the eleventh week of the season.
Year two: 3-9.
Four wins in two seasons is the kind of record that ends careers. It very nearly ended his.
Year three: 9-5, a Conference USA West Division title, a berth in the conference championship game, and C-USA Coach of the Year.
He left for the NFL immediately afterward. His head coaching record at Southern Miss finished at 13-25 — a number that looks like failure until you notice which order the seasons came in.
Georgia, and two national championships
Monken ran the Georgia offense from 2020 to 2022 and coordinated back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022 — the school’s first titles since 1980. The 2022 offense led the country in total yards and points scored.
Baltimore
Three seasons as Ravens offensive coordinator. Lamar Jackson won league MVP in his first year. In 2024 Baltimore led the NFL in total offense and rushing, and became the first team in NFL history to record 4,000 passing yards and 3,000 rushing yards in the same season.
Part Three: Cleveland
The Browns fired Kevin Stefanski on January 5, 2026, after six seasons, two Coach of the Year awards and consecutive finishes of 3-14 and 5-12. General manager Andrew Berry ran the search. It came down to Monken, Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, and Rams pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase.
Monken got it. Five years, through the 2030 season. He is the nineteenth head coach in Browns history, and he had coordinated their offense once before, in 2019.
He was introduced on February 3, two days before his sixtieth birthday.
“It’s been a long time coming. It really has been a long journey.”
And on why now, at sixty:
“I’m not getting any younger… the version you’re getting of me now is a hell of a lot better than it would’ve been 15-20 years ago.”
And, on what his employers are paying for:
“They cut a check with my name on it. You know what they expect? A fricking kick-(butt) football team.”
He did not mention Knox College at the press conference.
Part Four: He never actually left
This is the part that matters locally.
In June 2024 — while offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens, eighteen months before the Browns job — Monken came back to Galesburg and sat on a panel at Knox’s inaugural State of Football Address, alongside the college president, then-head coach Aaron Willits, and Randy Oberembt, the man who had coached him in 1986.
More than 120 football alumni turned up. Monken argued that the programme needed sustained alumni engagement and annual meetings.
“There’s a collective bond in athletics.”
Knox says he returns regularly to speak at programme events. This is not a man who lists his alma mater on a bio and never thinks about it again.
And there is a second Knox man in Cleveland
John Wozniak, Knox class of 1999, is the Browns’ assistant wide receivers coach.
Wozniak played quarterback at Knox — then receiver as a junior, then quarterback again as a senior, earning honourable mention All-Midwest Conference in 1998. He graduated with dual degrees in physics and secondary education. And he stayed: he coached at Knox from 1999 to 2003, running the offense for four of those years.
His path from there ran through Oklahoma State, LSU, Alabama and back to Oklahoma State, where he was named national running backs coach of the year in 2024. Monken hired him onto that first Southern Miss staff in 2013. They have been circling each other for two decades.
On his own education, Wozniak has said: “I can’t imagine not going to Knox College. Thank God I did.”
Also on the 2026 Browns staff: Travis Monken, Todd’s son, as an offensive analyst.
A footnote too strange to leave out
The Bronze Turkey that Monken never won has been stolen more than a dozen times in its history. It spent five years buried under Monmouth’s cinder track. It vanished entirely in 1983, prompting a replacement in 1986.
One of the thefts, in 1965, was carried out by a Knox student who talked his way to the trophy by posing as a reporter.
His name was Robert Hanssen. He later became an FBI agent, and then the most damaging Soviet mole in the bureau’s history.
What it means from here
Knox football has not had a winning season since 2002. It went 2-7 last year. It has lost twenty-six straight to Monmouth, a run that started the year after its last victory in 1998.
None of that changes because a man who played quarterback there in 1988 now runs an NFL team. Adam Gonzaga still has to win games at Knosher Bowl with the players he has.
But it is worth saying plainly, because nobody around here says it often enough: a quarterback from a 5-4 Division III team in Galesburg, Illinois is now the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. He shared the job as an underclassman. He lost three Bronze Turkey games. He went 4-20 in his first two seasons as a head coach.
Then he coordinated two national championships and the most productive offense in NFL history by one measure, and at fifty-nine he got the job.
Knox plays Monmouth on November 14 at noon at Knosher Bowl, for the Bronze Turkey that Monken never held.
Records and citations from Knox College Athletics and the Knox-Lombard Athletic Hall of Fame. Coaching history via the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens and Georgia athletics. Press conference quotes from the Browns and the Associated Press. Randy Oberembt’s recollections via WGIL. More on the Bronze Turkey rivalry →
