Bernie Kosar has always been up to the challenge, no matter what it was.

As such, then, I fully expect him to win this new battle, too, with some serious health issues. It won’t be easy, but after all, he’s Bernie Kosar, and that counts for a lot — a whole heckuva lot, in fact.

In the meantime, we can look back at his 8 1/2-year career with the Browns from 1985 to midway through the 1993 season, and smile. These are warm thoughts.

There was his first regular-season game. He wasn’t supposed to play as a rookie in 1985 — he was slated to sit behind Gary Danielson and learn from him — but that plan was thrown aside when the veteran got hurt in the second quarter of an Oct. 6 game against the New England Patriots at Cleveland Stadium.

Kosar trotted out onto the field. When he got to the huddle, it was noisy, as everybody was jabbering about the injury to Danielson. Kosar looked around for a couple moments at all the confusion and upheaval and then screamed, “Shut up!” The veterans all quit talking immediately and stared at him, wondering who this rookie was who had the nerve to do something like that. It was Kosar’s huddle, and he was the guy in charge.

None of this was lost on Browns Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsone.

“I knew right then and there that we had something special with this kid,” he said in the locker room afterward.

He was right on point, because Kosar, despite fumbling while taking the snap from center Mike Baab on the very first play, recovered nicely and led the Browns to a 24-20 victory over a Patriots team that would make it all the way to the franchise’s first Super Bowl. As for the Browns, the win turned out to be key, as they finished 8-8, squeezing past the Cincinnati Bengals for their first AFC Central title since that Kardiac Kids year of 1980. It was a nice bounce-back from the miserable 1984 season in which the Browns were just 5-11.

More Bernie Kosar memories to follow.

Steve King