ANOTHER TIME THE CROWD RATTLED THE BENGALS

Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski raved about the help the big, loud crowd at Cleveland Browns Stadium gave his team in its resounding 24-3 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.

The sellout gathering rattled the Bengals right from the start, snd as the game continued to go the Browns’ way, the impact became even greater. Cincinnati was completely out of rhythm.

Large crowds rattling opponents used to be commonplace with the original Browns franchise at Cleveland Stadium. That place was as tough as any in the NFL for opponents to play. Indeed, visitors hated coming there because they knew the Browns were just that much more difficult to beat.

In fact, we are just about at the 32nd anniversary of a big Browns win over the Bengals at Cleveland early in the season for a first-year Browns head coach.

It was Sept. 15, 1991 when the Browns got their first home win of the Bill Belichick era, in his third game overall, by defeating Cincinnati 14–13. The Bengals were so adversely affected offensively by the crowd at the Dawg Pound end of the field that they had a series of false-start penalties and had to to burn timeouts because the play clock was running down.

When the game ended, an exuberant Belichick threw off his headset and sprinted down to that end of the field, waved to the fans and thanked them. They went crazy. At that moment, the populace was ready to elect Belichick mayor of Cleveland.

Kevin Stefanski is not at that level yet, but if the Browns keep winning, especially at home, and the crowd continues to have a real impact in it, perhaps he might be able to get elected to City Council.

Steve King