Browns great Bill Nelsen - Browns Daily Dose

Browns great Bill Nelsen

By STEVE KING

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that as this coronavirus pandemic keeps rolling on, unfortunately:

*READER REACT:

As I’ve said many, many times before, Browns fans are smart. They don’t miss a thing – ever. After reading our recent story about May 14 being the 52nd anniversary of the Browns’ 1968 trade to acquire from the Pittsburgh Steelers eventual Browns great Bill Nelsen at quarterback. Nelsen who helped lead the club to back-to-back NFL Championship Game appearances in 1968 and ’69, a reader informed us – and, as it turns out, apparently all of Northeast Ohio as well — that the Browns great Bill Nelsen passed away on April 11, 2019 at the age of 78 in Orlando, Fla. “It was never reported in Cleveland,” the reader stated. Sadly, we will report that passing more than 13 months after the fact. A Browns great deserves more than that, better than that. Doug Dieken, the Browns’ longtime radio color analyst and the club’s left tackle from 1971-84, remembers his former teammate well. “As a rookie, he use to chew our butts out, but when you walked into the training room on Friday and saw him getting his knee drained so he could play on Sunday , you had to respect his toughness,” Dieken said. “He didn’t have the strongest arm, but he was one of the smartest quarterbacks. It’s no surprise he got into coaching (he was rumored to be a candidate for the Browns head-coaching job in 1975 when the team eventually hired Forrest Gregg). He loved his golf and used to practice chipping on the football field at Hiram (College) before during training camp.” Incidentally, as fate would have it, Gregg died a day after Nelsen, on April 12, 2019.

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*JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS:

What a sight it was for the Browns back in the early days when two Pro Football Hall of Famers, middle guard Bill Willis and center Frank “Gunner” Gatski, squared off against one another in practice. One day, the athletic Willis jumped over Gatski just as he was snapping the ball and disrupted the play in the backfield before it ever had a chance to start. “Tell him to quit doing that!,” Gatski shouted at head coach Paul Brown.

*MONEY-GRABBER:

After being knocked down at the line of scrimmage, Willis did the unthinkable for a defensive lineman in catching from behind speedy New York Giants running back Gene “Choo-Choo” Roberts, tackling him at the Cleveland 7 after a 32-yard run,in the fourth quarter of the Browns’ 8-3 win in a special American Conference playoff game on Dec. 17, 1950 at Cleveland Stadium. It was the key play in the game, for the Browns kept the Giants from scoring any points. How did a middle guard manage to make up so much ground so quickly to tackle one of the fastest players in the game? “I didn’t see him carrying a football,” Willis said. “I just saw him carrying a bag of (playoff) money (that he and his teammates would not get if the Browns lost).” Salaries were low back then, and that playoff money was a tremendous bonus. Willis later tackled Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly in the end zone for a safety to culminate the scoring on a brutally-cold, icy day. Players on both teams wore tennis shoes for better footing. The Browns returned to Cleveland Stadium a week later, on Christmas Eve, and edged the Los Angeles Rams 30-28 on a 16-yard Lou Groza field goal with just 28 seconds left in the NFL Championship Game in their first year in the league.

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*WRONG AGAIN:

Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh says a lot of things that make no sense, and he was at it again the other day when talking about the possibility of the school building a statue outside Michigan Stadium for former Wolverines quarterback Tom Brady. “Sure, I’d like to see that,” Harbaugh said. “He’s the GOAT (greatest of all-time). He’s kind of lapped the field.” Brady may indeed be the best ever – he’s certainly at least in the conversation — but he has definitely not lapped the field, not ever close to it. The No. 1 job of a quarterback is to win the game, and Brady, of course, is a tremendous winner. But I will agree with another big winner, a guy by the name of Joe Montana, who said that the Browns’ Otto Graham is the greatest quarterback of all-time because he won every year. Graham led the Browns to the league championship game in each of his 10 seasons, with seven titles. That will forever be the greatest run of success in pro football history. Just sayin’ there, Coach. BTW, regarding lapping the field, I think Ohio State has done that with your team.

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*AND FINALLY:

What if the same thing that happened to the Browns last season happens to Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this year in that they are completely unable to match the preseason hype and have a miserably disappointing finish? And what if Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots struggle as well without Brady. Then who wins that unfortunate break-up of one of the greatest head coach-quarterback duos in pro football history? Speaking of Graham and Paul Brown, another famous duo in that regard, the Browns really struggled in 1956, the year after Graham retired, going 5-7 for Brown’s first – and only – losing season in his 17 years in Cleveland. Brown kept looking for another Graham in his days with the Browns, but he never found anyone even remotely close to him, which is understandable. Belichick is a historian of the game and a big Paul Brown fan. I wonder if he has ever thought about the same fate befalling him?

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