Brian Brennan, part of the three-member 2026 Browns Legends class along with center Alex Mack and right tackle Lou Rymkus, is already one of the most productive — and greatest — wide receivers in club history.

During his eight-year career (1984-91), he had 315 receptions fur 4,148 yards and 19 touchdowns. I’m sure Brennan dropped a few passes, but I just don’t remember them. He had tremendous hands, as good as the Browns have ever had, including Pro Football Hall of Famers Paul Warfield and Dante “Gluegingers” Lavelli. Brennan joined with wide receivers Webster Slaughter and Reggie Langhorne and tight end Ozzie Newsome to give quarterback Bernie Kosar plenty of talented targets in that highly-successful last half of the 1980s.

But as big as Brennan’s star was, and still is, even all these years later, it could have been — it unquestionably would have been — astronomically bigger had his most memorable catch just held up. That is, of course, his 48-yard touchdown reception that gave the Browns a 20-13 lead over the Denver Broncos with just under five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of the 1986 AFC Championship Game. When that occurred, everyone — absolutely, positively everyone — in Northeast Ohio believed with every fiber of their being it was the knockout punch in what had been a tough, gritty, back-and-forth battle that would send the Browns to the Super Bowl for the first time. You could feel it, sense it and almost touch it. That’s how close it was.

But, as we all know, it wasn’t. It didn’t turn out that way.

Had it, though, been the game-winner — and, as it were, the game-changer — then it would have thrust Brennan into rare air with two other wide receivers in Browns history — Lavelli, whose fourth-quarter TD catch of an Otto Graham pass provided a 14-9 come-from-behind victory over the New York Yankees in the 1946 All-America Football Conference Championship Game, and Gary Collins, who caught three touchdown passes from Frank Ryan in a dominating 27-0 triumph over the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts in 1964 that led the way to their last NFL title.

All three games were at Cleveland Stadium.

And — get this — all three players wore No. 86, although Lavelli was still donning No. 56 in the days before pro foitball changed its numbering system in 1952.

Steve King