Blanton Collier in 1963 delivers best coaching job in Browns history

Blanton Collier, who had the job from 1963-70, is the second-best head coach in Browns history, behind only Pro Football Hall of Famer Paul Brown.

In fact, he is the only Browns coach in the Hall of the Very Good, a made-up term by the HOF’s Joe Horrigan to describe a place for people who fall just short of the Hall of Fame. In fact, if his poor hearing had not caused him to retire prematurely, then he might just be in the Hall of Fame.

Collier was truly a genius, about both football and leading people. He was superb, simply brilliant.
And he showed it right away that first season of 1963, when he turned in the best coaching job in Browns history, by far, and that’s saying something because there have been a lot of good ones.

Collier had been an assistant coach — the top one, really — on Paul Brown’s staff for the first eight seasons in Browns history, 1946-53, before the native Kentuckian left to return home and take over the head coaching job at the University of Kentucky. He came back to the Browns as an assistant in 1962, which turned out to be the last of Brown’s 17 seasons in Cleveland. Brown was fired three weeks after the 1962 season ended by Browns owner Art Modell and replaced immediately by Collier, Brown’s good friend.

Collier was taking over for not just a coaching legend in Brown, but also the man for whom the team is named. It was, then, the toughest coaching challenge in the history of pro football, if not also the history of pro sports overall.

If that wasn’t formidable enough, less than a week after Collier was hired, rookie two-way back Tom Bloom, a Purdue product who was picked in the sixth round of the 1963 NFL Draft, was killed in a car accident near Dayton. That began a 4-1/2-month period in which three Browns players died, including also running back Ernie Davis (leukemia) and safety Don Fleming (electrocuted while working an offseason construction job). It is the most tragic offseason in pro sports history.

A little more than a month after Fleming’s funeral, the Browns opened training camp for the 12th straight year at Hiram College. Collier inherited a team that in 1962 finished just 7-6-1, the second-worst record in franchise history, in large part because it struggled offensively, especially at quarterback and in the passing game.

But before Collier tackled any of those problems, he changed — dramatically so — the way the team was run as he empowered the players in the process, giving them a real say in judt about all decisions. That was in stark contrast to Brown’s methods, whereby he gave the players virtually no input. Not surprisingly, the players fully embraced the change and Collier became a players’ coach, a guy for whom they wanted to play.

In 1962, Frank Ryan, who was in his first season with Cleveland after arriving in a trade with the Los Angeles Rams, and Jim Ninowski shared almost equally the quarterback duties. What’s that saying, “When you two quarterbacks, you have none?”

Collier made Ryan the full-time starter right away, and it worked like a charm, for over the next five seasons, he turned into the best quarterback in the game, throwing a club-record 25 touchdown passes in both of his first two years, and then three — all to wide receiver Gary Collins — in the stunning 27-0 win over the Baltimore Colts in the 1964 NFL Championship Game that gave the Browns their first league title since 1955.

But back to 1963. Collins set a team record with 13 touchdown receptions. The proficient passing attack opened up running lanes for Jim Brown, who, after (barely) failing to rush for 1,000 yards (996) in 1962, set an NFL record with 1,863.

The Browns, scoring points in bunches, started 6-0 and finished 10-4, just a game behind the Eastern Conference champion New York Giants (11-3). The Browns recorded double-digit victories for the first time since 1953, the final year of Collier’s first stint in Cleveland.

Ladies and gentlemen, in a realistic way, and especially with what he was up against, Blanton Collier did almost a perfect job.

Steve King

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