Wednesday, Aug. 26 (AM) – An open letter to former Browns quarterback Jim McMahon:

Dear Jim:

So I see where, in a recent interview, you called Bill Belichick, your head coach for the time you spent with the Browns in 1995, “a liar and a cheater.” This, of course, is in regards to the whole Deflategate thing involving Belichick’s current team, the New England Patriots.

Your accusations may or may not be true. We’ll let others make that determination. But the fact of the matter is that way back when, when you played, as in now, all coaches and all players bend the rules a little bit. There’s that old adage in sports that, “If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not tryin’, and I’m sure you saw evidence of that before you got to Cleveland to finish your career. I know I saw it in that 1995 season and for all the other years that I covered the Browns on a daily basis as a beat writer.

But I’d be more apt to believe you in your specific claims about Belichick if I hadn’t seen the 1995 Browns team photo, with you in it. That discredits you like nothing else could.

Like most of us, I’ve seen a lot of team photos at all level of sports, from the youth leagues to the pros, both male and female, through the years. If I had a dollar for every obscene gesture I’ve noticed in those photos, you and I could go to a nice dinner and leave a big tip.

But I had never seen previously, or since, what I saw in that 1995 Browns photo. There you were wearing sunglasses. Sunglasses?! Really?! Sunglasses?!

You probably thought that you were too cool for school that day. You’d give everybody your Jack Nicholson look and we’d all think you had it made in the shade, or in shades, or some such thing.

But we thought just the opposite. Your appearance that day screams: “I’m a knucklehead. I belong on The Three Stooges.”

You had a nice career and won that Super Bowl in 1985 with the Chicago Bears. Congratulations. But by the time you got to Cleveland, you were a third-stringer – an insurance policy in case both Vinny Testaverde and Eric Zeier got hurt. You may not think much of Belichick, but that was a smart move on his part. He knew that quarterbacks get hurt a lot, and when they do, how it can wreck a team’s chances. So he wanted to be ready for a worse-case scenario.

And I’m sure you would have been ready to go if called upon. Your sunglasses indicate that you were all in, all of the time.

Yeah, right.

Why you waited 20 years to bring up some wild claim is beyond me. Jim, instead of living in the past – or the past you thought you saw – just enjoy your retirement and your family.

And please, if you’ve still got those dorky-looking sunglasses, let your old buddy with the Bears, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, use his massive girth to stomp them into a million pieces and then throw them away. It was a bad look, and you’re better than that.

Sincerely,
Steve King