This time of year brings with it the anniversaries of the two most important games in Browns history — by far, it isn’t even close.
They occurred a week apart 74 years ago, in 1950, at Cleveland Stadium.
It was on Dec. 17 of that year — in the Browns’ fifth season of existence — that they edged the New York Giants 8-3 in a special playoff game to decide the American Conference title after the two teams finished the regular season tied for first place at 10-2.
That sent the Browns to the NFL Championship Game on Dec. 24, in which they rallied to defeat the Los Angeles Rams 30-28 on a 16-yard field goal by Lou Groza with 28 seconds left, sending the fans home in a merry mood on Christmas Eve.
This was the Browns’ first year in the NFL after coming from the All-America Football Conference, which they dominated, winning all four championships and, in essence by eliminating the competive balance, causing the fledgling league to dissolve almost before it really got going.
But the NFL people, especially the hardliners, which encompassed most of those in the league, were not impressed at all by the Browns’ accomplishments. They called the AAFC “a Mickey Mouse league,” which meant that, at least in their eyes, the Browns were more chumps than champs.
That caused Cleveland head coach Paul Brown, his assistant coaches and their players to seethe. They knew better. They were confident in their ability to beat not just the AAFC teams, but also the ones in the NFL. They just needed an opportunity to do it, and, sensing that the AAFC might fold at some point sooner rather than later and reach some kind of truce with the NFL, they spent time in those final two seasons of 1948 and ‘49 getting ready to make the move. Their hunch was right and the Browns, along with the San Francisco 49ers and the first version of the Baltimore Colts, were absorbed into the NFL.
The NFL did everything it could to try to quickly put the Browns in their place, scheduling them against the two-time defending league champion Eagles in Philadelphia on Saturday night, before the the rest of the teams began their season the next afternoon, so they — and the rest of the country — could witness the onslaught.
They all got to see a beatdown, all right, but not in the way the NFL envisioned. The Browns dominated the game from start to finish, winning 35-10. The margin of victory would’ve been even greater had not the Browns’ return of the opening kickoff for a touchdown was nullified by a bogus clipping penalty.
The Browns outgained the Eagles by exactly 200 yards, passing for 307 yards in the process on the arm of quarterback Otto Graham. Eagles head coach Earle “Greasy” Neale scoffed afterward that, with all that fancy passing, the Browns couldn’t line up and beat his team in the trenches with the running game.
You already know how Brown took that. He called for no passes whatsoever — all runs — in the rematch in Cleveland two months later in the next-to-last regular-season game. The result was another Cleveland victory, this time by 13–7. Neale had nothing to say after that one.
The Browns won all the rest of their regular-season games as well — except for the two against the Giants three weeks apart in October, losing 6-0 at Cleveland and then 17–13 at New York as the Giants defense, with what was called an “umbrella” defensive alignment that attacked the flanks, shut down the prolific Browns offense.
Sandwiched around the second game against the Browns, the Giants suffered their two defeats, 17–6 to the Pittsburgh Steelers and then 17–3 to the Chicago Cardinals.
The pressure was on the Browns in that special playoff game, for if they couldn’t figure out a way to get by the Giants, then their season will have been a failure because winning the championship was the only thing that was going to shut everybody up and prove that they had the best team in all of football.
The Browns triumphed on two Groza field goals, a safety by middle guard Bill Willis when he tackled quarterback Charlie Conerly in the end zone and then a sensational play by Willis who, after being blocked to the ground at the line of scrimmage, got up and somehow chased down from behind running back Gene “Choo-choo” Roberts, one of the fastest players in the league, aftet a 32-yard scamper to the Cleveland 7 in the middle of the fourth quarter to prevent a touchdown. The Giants messed up offensively big-time after that and failed to get even a field goal. That tackle, then, was the turning point in the game.
The job was not done, though, despite the victory. The Browns had to finish the job against the Rams, the team that, after winning the 1945 NFL championship while being based in Cleveland, bolted for the West Coast just as the Browns were getting ready to begin their first season.
So, in a match between Cleveland’s current team and its former one, the Browns prevailed despite trailing 28–20 in the days when there was no two-point conversion following a touchdown. Thus the Browns needed two scores, but the situation looked bleak when quarterback Otto Graham fumbled the ball away to the Rams on the exchange from center midway through the fourth quarter. Graham dejectedly walked off the field believing he had just lost the game for his team, but Brown told him not to worry, that the defense would hold the Rams and get the ball back for him. And that’s exactly what happened.
Graham marched the team down the field for a touchdown to cut the deficit to 28-27. But the Browns still needed a field goal, and, on their final possession of the game, they moved the ball once again and positioned Groza to boot the chip-shot kick
for the victory.
The Browns had their championship, and their dignity, because no one could doubt them now.
And if the Browns had not won that first NFL title and not gotten off to such a fast start in the new league after, as mentioned, dominating their former league, who knows if the two other NFL championships they won through the end of that great run in those first 10 seasons in 1955, would have happened. Those two big postseason wins in 1950 were the catalyst to all that. They paved the way for those early Browns teams to become legendary.
A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!!
Steve King
