Friday, Sept. 4 (PM) — Back in the day, before concerns over injuries limited starters’ playing time and made coming out of the fray without losing a key player the main goal of the night, winning and losing in the preseason meant a lot to NFL teams.
That was especially true for the 1950 Browns. They had a lot to prove.
And on this date 65 years ago, they proved it — at least the first stage of it, anyway.
The Browns defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 41-31 at Buffalo on Sept. 4, 1950 to complete their first NFL preseason with a 5-0 record.
Before beating Pittsburgh, the Browns had dispatched, in order, the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Colts, Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, outscoring their five opponents by an impressive175-82.
The Browns had spent their first four seasons in the All-America Football Conference and wanted to show that their exploits there — four straight league championships, a perfect season in 1948, a 29-game unbeaten string from 1947-49 and an overall record of 52-4-4 — were the real deal.. They were so good, in fact, that they put the AAFC out of business, causing it to fold after the 1949 season. The Browns and two other AAFC teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, were absorbed into the NFL.
But the hard-line NFL people scoffed at those AAFC accomplishments, claiming that they had come against inferior competition. That made Cleveland head coach Paul Brown and his team, made up of eventual Pro Football Hall of Famers, just like himself, bristle. They seethed.
To drive home their point to the NFL people, they knew they couldn’t ease their way through the transition to the new league. They had to hit the ground running, and that meant winning in the preseason, lest they prove their doubters right.
And, to their credit, the Browns were ready from the get-go, as evidenced by their unbeaten record that was capped by the win over Pittsburgh.
But this story about the 1950 Browns gets even better, and we’ll revisit bits and pieces of it as we go along through the fall.
By Steve King
