The Cleveland Browns now have a very short list of potential head coaching candidates. Their original ledger has had quite a few names, but now, it is down to just a few.
Nate Scheelhaase, age 35, is the
passing game coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams, and one of the finalists for the open head coach position with the Browns. He has already been interviewed.
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If Cleveland hires him, he will become the very first Browns head coach who was named his state’s Gatorade Player of the Year as a player in high school.
Who is Nate Scheelhaase? What are his qualifications?
Beginnings
Nathan “Nate” Scheelhaase (pronounced SHEEL-HOUSE) grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, which means he was a lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan. He remains a huge Patrick Mahomes fan. Scheelhaase attended Rockhurst High School and was quite the athlete as he stood 6’-3”.
He played quarterback in football, ran track, and was a star player for their boys’ basketball team. He ran track to make himself faster.
But football was his passion. His father, Nate Creer, was a star cornerback with the University of Iowa and was named as one of Iowa’s all-time team MVPs. Rivals.com ranked Scheelhaase as a four-star recruit as a dual-threat quarterback and played some safety.
As a junior, he won the Thomas A. Simone Award, given out to the most outstanding high school football player in the Kansas City Metropolitan area and the region’s version of the Heisman Trophy. Scheelhaase was selected First Team All-Metro as his school captured the state championship with a 13-0-0 record and was named the 2007 Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year.
In his senior campaign, he passed for 1,726 yards with 17 touchdowns and ran for 864 yards with an additional 18 TDs. Scheelhaase was named a SuperPrep All-American, voted the Metro Offensive Player of the Year by the Kansas City Star, selected First Team All-State, and First Team All-Metro.
One other prize he gathered from his high school days was that he married his high school sweetheart, Morgan Miller, in 2013.
Scheelhaase received offers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. He chose Illinois because other schools wanted him to switch sides and play safety, whereas Illinois recruited him as a quarterback.
Although he was redshirted as a freshman, he won the Faculty Award for exemplary leadership in community, classroom, and on the field for the 2009-10 academic year. In the 2010 season, he became the starting QB for Illinois. He had 1,583 passing yards and 806 rushing yards with 22 total touchdowns and was named Fourth Team All-Freshman Team, plus Honorable Mention Freshman All-American. His team elected him Rookie of the Year and named him an Academic All-Big Ten honoree.
The following season, Scheelhaase was named Captain and again was selected an Academic All-Big Ten honoree. He threw for 2,110 yards, rushed for 624 yards, and recorded 19 total touchdowns.
As a junior in 2012, he missed two games due to injury. His passing totals were 1,361 yards, and he rushed for 303 yards with eight total touchdowns. Named Fourth Team All-Big 10 and once again was included as an Academic All-Big Ten honoree.
In his senior crusade, Scheelhaase started all 12 games. This distinction became the most ever by an Illinois quarterback and tied the most by any player in school history. Senior stats: 287 completions on 430 attempts for 3,272 yards, 66.7% completion percentage, 21 TDs to 13 picks, 140.7 QB rating, rushed for 271 yards on 113 attempts with an additional four TDs.
Scheelhaase set the school football record for career offensive yards with 10,634 yards. In addition, he set three other school records, including most rushing yards by a quarterback (2,066). He also led the Big-10 in completions per game (23.92).
He was named the team’s Most Outstanding Offensive Player, Academic All-Big 10, 2014 Big-10 Medal of Honor recipient, NFF National Scholar-Athlete Award semifinalist, and a Finalist for Senior CLASS Award, which recognizes community, classroom, character, and competition.
His greatest accomplishment was the fact that he was named an Academic All-Big 10 honoree four times.
Going the coaching route
Scheelhaase went undrafted in the 2014 NFL draft. He was unable to get a tryout with any NFL teams or a training camp invitation. Coaching was the most obvious route, although at first, this wasn’t really an option. He had seen how turbulent the college coaching profession could be for coaches and their families. While at Illinois, he had five offensive coordinators and three head coaches, so he knew that life wasn’t stable.
And besides, Scheelhaase was very intelligent. Surely, he could hook up with a career in the financial world. Instead, for a year, he worked for a youth ministry as their youth pastor in Louisville, Kentucky.
While at this church, Scheelhaase got to know a high school football coach and had lots of interactions with high school football players as their pastor. It was then that he started thinking about a coaching career at the high school level. He thought, just being newly married, that this level didn’t have as much transition in coaching, and a guy could live in the same area in the same house for a decade or more.
But within that first year after graduating from Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in communication and intentions of working on a master’s degree in recreation, sport, and tourism, he came back to his alma mater as the assistant director of football operations under head coach Tim Beckman.
However, before his first season on a coaching staff began, Beckman was fired just weeks before the season opener. Scheelhaase was promoted to an on-field assistant, a month into coaching. Former NFL coach Lovie Smith was hired as the head coach who kept Scheelhaase on his staff for two years as an offensive analyst.
In 2018, Scheelhaase was hired as the RB coach at Iowa State, followed by shifting to the WR coach, and was promoted to the additional titles of running game coordinator and running backs coach. In 2023, he was again elevated to the OC.
The success at Iowa State got several coaches plenty of attention from NFL clubs. Assistant head coach Tyler Roehl was hired by the Detroit Lions. The Los Angeles Rams reached out to Scheelhaase for an interview. He was then hired as the passing game specialist in 2024, a position he kept this past season.
Rams’ success?
So, his journey has had its twists and turns, but what every Browns fan wants to know is what type of success Scheelhaase has had as a professional coach. After all, if Cleveland is going to hire him to run their operation and fix the problems with the offense, can he?
If he is hired by Cleveland, on Day 1, Scheelhaase would have on his honey-do list, fixing the following: Quarterback, offensive line, and receiver room.
How has Los Angeles done on offense since Scheelhaase has been in charge of their passing game?
In 2024, the Rams offense finished #15 overall with an average of gaining 331.4 yards a game. That breaks down to being ranked #10 in passing attack and #24 in rushing.
The dissection with the 2024 offense: 4,096 passing yards (ranked #10), 559 attempts (#15), 367 completions (#13), 65.6% completion percentage (#14), 7.3 yards per completion average (#14), 22 passing touchdowns (#17), fewest interceptions with nine (#7), 192 first down conversions via the pass (#15), 51 plays of 20+ (#15), 7 plays of 40+ (#18), and fewest sacks allowed with 31 (#6).
Rams QB Matthew Stafford was #13 in the league in passing under the tutelage of Scheelhaase with 3,762 yards. WR Davante Adams ranked #18 with 85 receptions, and WR Puka Nacua was #23 in receptions with 79.
For 2025, the Rams were ranked #1 in total offense. This unit averaged 394.6 yards per game and scored a whopping 65 touchdowns.
Los Angeles ranked #1 in passing offense and #7 in rushing attack. Every offensive stat from 2024 was approved upon this past season.
The breakdown with the 2025 offense: 4,707 passing yards (ranked #2), 598 attempts (#5), 388 completions (#8), 64.9% completion percentage (#15), 7.9 yards per completion average (#4), 46 passing touchdowns (#1), fewest interceptions with eight (#4), 236 first down conversions via the pass (#2), 72 plays of 20+ (#1), 8 plays of 40+ (#10), and fewest sacks allowed with 23 (#2).
Rams QB Matthew Stafford was #1 in the league in passing this season with 4,707 yards. Nacua was #1 in receptions with 129, while Adams ranked #44 with 60 receptions.
One of the rarest aspects in the NFL is to have a quarterback ranked #1 and, in the same season, have one of his receivers ranked #1.
The big question seems to be, can Scheelhaase jump from a club’s passing game coordinator and become a head coach without ever being a team’s coordinator?
The Browns have already officially requested a second interview with Scheelhaase and plan to meet with the Rams coach in California on Monday. After all, he is an offensive-minded candidate; those are a high priority right now.
Of course, all of this becomes a little bit easier when the Rams have Nacua on the roster, but he was drafted in the fifth round of the 2023 NFL draft, Scheelhaase’s first year in LA. Somebody had to develop his talents at the next level. And then Adams came to Los Angeles, a lot of media outlets talked about how old he was (age 33), and he would only become a complementary option on offense. Instead, he shone and was the 2025 NFL receiving touchdowns leader with 14 scores.
These things just don’t happen by themselves.
Maybe Scheelhaase needs to wait and work a few years at offensive coordinator. Maybe he needs more seasoning.
Or maybe he would be another young hire from the Sean McVay coaching tree and become a good head coach who can make Cleveland’s offense a parallel to the Rams’ offense.
