EDITOR’S NOTE: The following, which is the first in a three-part series on the top Browns players from 1946 through ’64, covers the players ranked nos. 21 through 30. It is part of a bigger series on the 70 best Browns players of all-time.
It’s been stated here and elsewhere any number of times – so many times, in fact, that it’s not even worth belaboring much anymore – that Browns defenses through the years have never gotten their due.
That’s what happens when almost every Browns Pro Football Hall of Famer is from the offensive side of the ball. The defense? There have been just two.
And that disrespect goes all the way back decades ago to the first teams, which had great defenses made up of standout players.
In this ongoing series of the best Browns players in history, we are now to those earliest years, the first 19 seasons, from 1946-64. So it seems telling, then, that in Part I that follows, 10 of the 12 Browns listed played on defense.
That’s a little over 83 percent, which is pretty impressive.
So, too, is the fact that in this 19-year span, the Browns won all eight of their league championships – four in four seasons in the All-America Football Conference from 1946-49, three more in their first six years in the NFL and then a final one in 1964. On four other occasions (1951-53, and 1957), they made it to the NFL Championship Game.
In their first 10 seasons, 1946-55, the Browns were the ultimate dynasty, making it to the league championship contest all 10 times, and winning seven crowns. That’s a streak that will likely never be duplicated in pro football, or any other pro sport.
In 1958, Cleveland finished the regular season tied for first place in the Eastern Conference and played for the right to appear in the NFL title game.
Cleveland had winning records in all but one of the 19 seasons, 1956, when the retirement of Otto Graham morphed into a 5-7 finish. Without competent quarterback play, the Browns simply couldn’t score points. The problem sure wasn’t the defense, which surrendered no more than 24 points in any game and kept exactly half of its 12 opponents to 14 or fewer points.
The New York Giants, who went on to win the NFL title in 1956, could manage only a split with Cleveland largely because of being held to a combined total of just 28 points in the two games.
Let’s take a look at some of the players from that, and other, Browns defenses during this era:
*No. 30 – linebackers Vince Costello (played with the Browns from 1957-66) and Galen Fiss (1956-66) and punter/tight end Horace Gillom (1947-56) – Why are there three players included here instead of just one, as is normally the case for each slot? Good question. The answer is simple: Because all three were deserving of being included in the top 30, or as it were, 32, players from this era. When everything was added up, there was no real difference between them – nothing to separate them. To eliminate one, or two, of them would not have been fair. It would not have been representative of the true greatness of this era. Costello and Fiss have a lot in common. Not only did they play the same position area, but they are also within a year of having played exactly the same seasons. They were both solid. You could count on them to show up every week and perform well. As for Gillom, he is the best punter in Browns history. That’s evidenced by the fact he led the NFL in punting average in back-to-back years, 1951 (45.5 yards) and ’52 (45.7). He also was the team’s career leader in punting average at 43.82 for 50 years, until Dave Zastudil (44.12) edged him out. As mentioned, Gillom, from Masssillon (Ohio) High School, also played what would now be considered a tight end, and was a pretty good one at that, averaging 15.1 yards on 43 catches in 1948 and ’49 combined. HOF tight end Ozzie Newsome averaged 12.1 yards per reception for his career. Only Milt Morin, with a career average of 15.5 yards, has done better as a Cleveland tight end than Gillom did in those two seasons 6½ decades ago. So, shhhh, don’t tell anybody, but this series is actually about the 72 best players of all-time.
*No. 29 – safety Don Paul – played with the Browns from 1954-58 – Paul was a running back with the Chicago Cardinals for four seasons and did some good things before coming to Cleveland, averaging 4.6 yards per rushing attempt and, in back-to-back years, averaging a combined 17.5 yards per reception. But the Browns didn’t need offensive skill players. They already had enough of them, all of whom were much better than Paul. So he was switched to defense and did well right away. He had seven interceptions, by far the best on the club in that aforementioned 1956 season, and had four interceptions in each of the other three years. His total of 22 is one of the better marks in team history. But he saved his best for the most important games, in the postseason. He intercepted a pass and returned it 32 yards in the 1954 NFL Championship Game against Detroit. That played a role in the Browns, who came into the day reeling with three consecutive title game defeats, including the last two to the Lions, making a statement with a resounding 56-10 triumph. Playing once again for the championship the following year at Los Angeles, the Browns got rolling toward another one-sided victory, 38-14, when Paul returned an interception 65 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter to make it 10-0. Paul’s 97 career interception return yards in the postseason are a team record. His 190 interception return yards in 1953 are No. 4 on the team in regular-season history.
*No. 28 – safety Kenny Konz – played with the Browns from 1953-59 – Here’s another safety who, like Paul, was a ballhawk and had ball-carrying skills. Konz, who lived his final years in Alliance, Ohio, about 70 minutes southeast of Cleveland, before passing away in 2008, was the team’s first-round pick, at No. 14 overall, in the 1951 NFL Draft out of LSU. He is fourth on the Browns with 30 career interceptions, and second with four interceptions returned for touchdowns. He led the club, or was tied for the lead, in interceptions five times in his seven seasons, including in each of his first three years. His seven interceptions in 1954 are one of the better single-season totals in franchise history. Konz returned two of those for touchdowns, which is tied for a club record. Also, just like Paul, he was a big-game player. He had two interceptions each in the 1954 and ’55 NFL title games. In addition, in 1956, he led the NFL by averaging 14.4 yards per punt return, which would be the third-highest figure in Cleveland history if he had had the necessary 15 attempts to qualify. He had 13.
*No. 27 – defensive end Paul Wiggin – played with the Browns from 1957-67 – Teams didn’t run at him — Wiggin made sure of that – and that enabled the Browns to be so much better – and to do so many varied things, to be so much more of a complete unit – defensively. Yes, wide receiver Webster Slaughter from those stellar teams during the last half of the 1980s. and the aforementioned Horace Gillom, both of whom are Cleveland Browns Legends, wore jersey No. 84 for at least part of their careers. But it may be that Wiggin, a Legend who had it for the last nine seasons of 11-year career, is the greatest Brown to have worn that number.
*No. 26 – defensive tackle Don Colo – played with the Browns from 1953-58 – Browns defensive players overall, as mentioned, have failed to get their just due, and Colo might be the poster child for that. You never hear him mentioned among the team’s best all-time tackles, which is a real shame because he certainly is. Coming out of Brown, not exactly a football factory, did not stop him from starring as a Brown, making it to three Pro Bowls and becoming one of the top tackles in the game in the mid- to late 1950s. He and Bob Gain, in fact, may have been the top tackle tandem in the NFL then.
*No. 25 – defensive back Tommy James – played with the Browns from 1948-55 – Where were the back-in-the-day Browns strongest defensively? Was it on the line? At linebacker? Or in the secondary? A good case – maybe even a convincing case – could be made for all three position areas. And the mention of James, along with Konz, Paul and, later in this piece, cornerback Warren Lahr, is proof that the secondary is certainly not secondary in that regard. Like Gillom a product of Massillon High School, James has 26 career interceptions, placing him eighth in team history. James’ best season – and the third-best in club annals – was when he had nine interceptions in 1950, the Browns’ first year in the NFL. James also tied for the team lead with five interceptions in 1953, after which he was moved to safety for the final two years of his career.
*No. 24 – defensive end Bill Glass – played with the Browns from 1962-68 – It seems fitting that Glass wore jersey No. 80, the same as Hall of Famer Len Ford. Ford is the best defensive end in team history, and Glass – along with Paul Wiggin, also on the list in this piece – constitute the next group of ends.
*No. 23 – running back Ernie Green – played with the Browns from 1962-68 – There is some symmetry in that Green is on this list. For in many ways, he is the offensive equivalent of all these defensive players in that he has never gotten credit for just how good he was, and just how much he did. Actually, we’ll never know how good Green really was, or how much he was capable of doing, because he never got the chance. After being traded as a rookie in 1962 from a team in the Green Bay Packers that had two future HOF backs on its roster in Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor Green, Green went to the Browns and played all seven of his seasons alongside two other HOF runners in Jim Brown (1962-65), the best overall player in the game’s history, and then Leroy Kelly (1966-68). Every week, Brown and Kelly were going to be featured in the game plan. That was hardly a shock to anyone. The Browns would have been foolish to not feature them. It was the formula for success, the key to winning. That Green was good enough to be the go-to back on most other teams, and never received that opportunity because he was in Cleveland, where he was always going to be second fiddle, is one of the most fascinating stories in team history. It is the example of the ultimate selflessness – of a guy who really took to heart the adage of his head coach, Blanton Collier, who said that it’s amazing what can be done when no one cares who gets the credit. So Green swallowed his pride – a big, healthy, heaping dose of it every day – and made things work. In doing so, he made the offense work, which, in turn, made the Browns work as a team. It was the same kind of team-first attitude that Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell, Brown’s first backfield mate, exhibited when he played in Cleveland from 1958-61. But Mitchell ended up getting traded to the Washington Redskins, who moved him to wide receiver, showcased him in their offense and, in many respects, made him the face of the franchise as the first African American in club history. Green never got traded. He stayed in Cleveland and made it work, seizing upon every opportunity, though few and far between they may have been, and making the most of the situation. Green rushed for 3,204 career yards, seventh-most in team history. His 4.8 yards-per-carry average in third-highest on the Browns. He rushed for 750 yards in 1966 and followed that up with 710 the following year, two of the best totals in the league. But as good as Green was as a rusher, he may have been even better as a receiver, catching little flares out of the backfield that broke the back of opposing defenses that accounted for Brown or Kelly, wide receivers Paul Warfield and Gary Collins, and tight end Milt Morin, but didn’t account for Green and ended up paying dearly for it. Green, in fact, became one of the best pass-catching backs in the NFL, leading the Browns with 39 receptions in 1967, finishing second with 45 in ’66 and being third two times, in ’63 (28) and ’65 (25). Overall, Green had 195 receptions for 20 touchdowns , or five more than he scored rushing. And when he was hired to coach the Cleveland running backs in 1969, the year after he retired, he became one of the first African American coaches in NFL history.
*No. 22 – linebacker/defensive end Jim Houston – played with the Browns from 1960-72 – The club’s first-round draft pick, at No. 8 overall, in 1960, the Massillon High School and Ohio State product wasn’t just a good football player. Rather, he was also a great athlete, and he proved it every time he touched the ball. That’s saying something for a guy who, at 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, was one of the biggest linebackers in the NFL. He had 14 career interceptions, all but two of which came during a five-year span. He had two interceptions in 1964, bringing one back for a touchdown and averaging 43 yards per return. He had two interceptions in 1965, averaging 16 yards per return. He had two interceptions in 1966, averaging 13.5 yards per return. He had three interceptions in 1967, bringing two back for touchdowns to tie a Browns record and averaging 32.3 yards per return. He also had three interceptions in 1968, helping the Browns to 32 interceptions, which stood as a team record until 2001, when, with two more games than in 1968, it was broken by one. And did we mention that Houston also returned a fumble for a touchdown in 1966? e hadHe
*No. 21 – cornerback Warren Lahr – played with the Browns from 1948-59 – For over two decades, Lahr was the gold standard for the Browns when it came to career interceptions. He had 40, which stood as a team record until safety Thom Darden broke it with 45 when he retired following the 1981 season. But Lahr remains the best ball-hawking cornerback Cleveland has ever had. Moreover, Lahr would trail Darden by just one interception if the totals from his first two seasons, both in the All-America Football Conference, were included. He had four picks, all of which came in 1949. Nonetheless, Lahr hit the ground running when the Browns entered the NFL in 1950, getting a career-high eight interceptions, two of which he returned for touchdowns (he brought back two more for scores in 1951). Then began a staggering run of consistency in which Lahr picked off five passes in each of the next five seasons (1951-55). Upon his retirement as a player, Lahr became known from 1963-67 as the pleasant man wearing a bow tie who served as the color analyst on Browns telecasts with play-by-play announcers Ken Coleman and Frank Gleiber before the networks took over the TV rights. Not surprisingly, Lahr was a big success there, too. In fact, you might say he stole the show.
NEXT: Part II, players nos. 11-20.
