Bad, bad move by the Browns 52 years ago

It’s 2022 and the focus of many, if not just about all, NFL teams, including the Browns, is on quarterback, the most important position in team sports.

It was that way, too, exactly 52 years ago, and the Browns were at the head of the list.

It was on Jan. 25, 1970, that the Browns pulled off a major trade, sending Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield, from Warren Harding High School and Ohio State, to Miami in exchange for the Dolphins’ first-round pick in the 1970 NFL Draft, at No. 3 overall. Two days later, the Browns used that choice to select Purdue quarterback Mike Phipps.

The premise was good; the Browns needed a young quarterback to groom as the successor to Bll Nelsen, who had led the Browns to the NFL Championship Game the previous two seasons but had a deteriorating situation with his knees. He couldn’t last much longer, and didn’t, playing only through the 1972 season before being forced into retirement.

So, then, the Browns even correctly calculated the timeline involving Nelsen’s demise, and ultimate exit. That allowed him to spend three seasons — the time thought necessary back then for a young quarterback to learn the pro game — mentoring Phipps.

The Dolphins, who had just hired Painesville native, John Carroll University product and former Browns defensive back Don Shula away from the Baltimore Colts to be their head coach, already had their franchise quarterback in Bob Griese. But he needed some targets to throw to, and Warfield, one of the top receivers in the game, would fill that role well.

Warfield helped the Dolphins go to three Super Bowls, the last two of which they won, before defecting for the big money being offered by the World Football League. In Miami’s perfect season in 1972, Warfield made a 35-yard catch late in the game that led to the winning touchdown as the Dolphins topped the Browns 20-14 in the AFC divisional playoffs. 

But the trade didn’t work out at all from the Browns’ standpoint, for Phipps never panned out. Sure, he had a few good streaks here and there, but he threw twice as many interceptions as touchdown passes, including five in that postseason loss to Miami, the last of which ended the Browns’ hopes of rallying for a touchdown at the end.

It set the Browns back about five years. That’s what happens when a team misses on a quarterback who is taken at the top of the draft.

Phipps finished the 1975 season with a bang, and there was hope he was finally coming into his own. He had a great first half against the New York Jets in the 1976 opener, where one of his teammates was Warfield, who signed with Cleveland in the offseason after the WFL folded. But then Phipps suffered a separated shoulder on a scramble right before halftime and never played again for the Browns, being dealt to the Chicago Bears in 1977.

The only silver lining in the dark Phipps cloud was the fact that the draft pick the Browns received in the trade, the Bears’ first-rounder in 1978, was used to take Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsome. So, in essence, then, Phipps was traded for ‘The Wizard of Oz.”

There’s one last interesting tidbit about this situation and that period of time. The Browns cornerback Warfield beat on the post pattern on the winning drive in the playoff game was a familiar face in Ben Davis. They practiced against each other for Warfield’s last three seasons in Cleveland. Davis was drafted in the 17th — and final — round in 1967 out of tiny Defiance. As such, he appeared to have no chance to make the team, especially one as good as the Browns back then. But not only did he earn a roster spot, but he played in Cleveland for six seasons, most of them as a starter.

As significant as all that was, it was not the thing that, looking back now, was the most noteworthy fact about Davis. It is, instead, that he is the brother of Angela Davis, the GOAT of female left-wing activists in the 1960s and ’70s.