It seems ironic — and very cool, really — that it’s believed the Browns may be the frontrunner to be selected by the NFL to oppose the “host” Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 6 — a Friday night— in Brazil in the regular-season opener.
No matter the opposition, it will be a game the entire world will be watching, which is exactly what the marketing-savvy NFL wants.
But if it’s the Browns, then it will be extra-special because they and the Eagles were in this same situation 74 years ago.
It was Sept. 16, 1950 when they met at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia in the first game of the entire NFL regular season. It was a much-anticipated game, so it was placed on a Saturday night, before the rest of the league’s teams played on Sunday afternoon, allowing the entire football world to watch.
The Browns had rolled to four straight championships in the four-year history of the All-American Football Conference from 1946 through ‘49 before the league was disbanded, with Cleveland, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts being absorbed into the NFL for the 1950 season. It was the Browns the NFL really wanted, though, because they were the signature team by far in the AAFC.
The hardliners from the NFL didn’t respect the Browns or what they had done. They thought they were a Mickey Mouse team playing in a Mickey Mouse league and were certain that if they ever went up against the big boys from the NFL, they would be squished like a bug. So they placed the Browns against the two-time defending NFL champion Eagles — on the road in a hostile environment, really taking head coach Paul Brown’s team out of its comfort zone — right away in what could best be described as the first Super Bowl, with the Browns getting all the respect, or the lack thereof, that the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs got when they met the NFL’s Green Bay Packers got in Super Bowl I in 1967. The Eagles would no doubt breeze to a win, humiliating the Browns, in front of everybody and the hardliners’ point would be made beyond any shadow of a doubt.
None of this was lost on the Browns, and as such, they had secretly been preparing for this game for the better part of the previous two seasons. They weren’t scared at all. They were convinced they were the better team — they knew they were the better team — and they savored the opportunity to prove it. They quietly seethed at being made out to be a bunch of chumps.
They got their chance and the world got its beatdown, but it was not the way the hardliners — or anybody else not named the Browns — had expected. Instead, it was Cleveland dominating every aspect of the game from the very start en route to a 35–10 victory that wasn’t even that close. The final score would’ve been even more lopsided had it not been for the Browns’ return of the opening kickoff for a touchdown being nullified by a phantom clipping penalty called 35 yards behind the play.
Quarterback Otto Graham passed for 346 yards and three touchdowns and the Browns rolled up 448 total yards, exactly 200 more than the Eagles. It was men against boys, the junior varsity against the varsity. And the men on the varsity knew all along how it was going to go.
Steve King
