It’s the day before Christmas, but down through the years, Dec. 24 has also been the date on which four important Browns games were played.
This is how they went:
*1950 – Browns 30, Los Angeles Rams 28 – NFL Championship Game – at Cleveland Stadium – Lou Groza’s 16-yard field goal with 28 seconds left gave the Browns the victory and, with the title that came with it, brought them the respect they so desperately wanted.
The Browns had won all four titles in the All-America Football Conference, which did not impress the NFL hard-liners one bit. In fact, it angered them because they thought the Browns had received undue attention for having overwhelming success in what they considered to be a “Mickey Mouse league.” The hard-liners were chomping at the bit for the Browns to get to the NFL so they give the club its comeuppance.
By the time of the title game, the hard-liners were obviously still waiting – impatiently so. They were banking on the Rams beating the Browns and giving them what they wanted, thus allowing them to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit head coach Paul Brown’s team was legitimate.
None of this was lost on Brown and the Browns. They were fully aware that they had to go all the way and capture the title if they wanted to win the approval of everybody in the NFL.
So the victory over the Rams was sweet, and the fact the Browns had to come from behind – way behind, actually – to get it made it just that much sweeter.
And did we mention that the Rams had started their life in Cleveland in 1937 and, after winning their only NFL title in 1945, bolted for Los Angeles instead of sticking around and competing for the city’s heart with the start-up Browns?
The Rams started quickly, scoring just minutes into the game on an 82-yard touchdown pass and then scoring again in the first quarter to lead 14-7. Cleveland’s TD came on Otto Graham’s 27-yard pass to wingback Dub Jones.
The Browns got a second-quarter TD on another Graham pass, this one a 37-yarder to wide receiver Dante Lavelli, but they couldn’t convert the extra point and trailed 14-13 at halftime. That was key and would come into play later.
Lavelli caught another scoring pass from Graham, a 39-yarder, in the third quarter to put Cleveland ahead for the first time, 20-14, but the Rams reclaimed the lead by the end of the quarter, 28-20.
That was decades before the implementation of the two-point conversion rule, so the eight-point deficit meant the Browns were two scores behind.
They got some of that back when Graham threw his fourth TD of the day, a 14-yarder to running back Rex Bumgardner, to make it 28-27. But when they later drove to the Los Angeles 24 with three minutes left, only to have Graham fumble the ball away, it seemed the Browns were done.
Not so. They held the Rams and got the ball back one last time, and Graham drove the Browns 57 yards to put Groza into position to kick the chip-shot game-winner.
As he always seemed to be, Graham was the star, passing for 298 yards and the four scores with one interception, while also rushing for a game-high 99 yards in 12 tries.
Lavelli caught 11 passes for 128 yards, while Jones had four receptions for 80 yards.
The Browns were jubilant. Of their five league titles, this one meant the most.
*1967 – Dallas Cowboys 52, Browns 14 – Eastern Conference Championship Game – at the Cotton Bowl – The Browns were in trouble. Many of their great players from the late 1950s and ’60s were retired, or getting ready to do so. And it showed in this game. Meanwhile, the Cowboys’ best players were coming into their prime. That showed, too. It was a perfect storm that acted like a tsunami against the Browns.
The Cowboys bolted to a 24-0 second-quarter lead and never looked back. The went up by as much as 52-7 in the fourth quarter before Frank Ryan threw a 75-yard TD pass to wide receiver Paul Warfield. The Browns’ other TD, also on a Ryan pass, a 13-yarder to tight end Milt Morin, came in the second quarter.
Warfield had 99 yards receiving overall on three catches, while Leroy Kelly rushed for 96 yards in just 15 carries. Those two, plus Ryan with his pair of TD throws, were the only Browns who stood out – positively, at least.
Other than that, it was all Cowboys. Quarterback Don Meredith was nearly perfect, completing 11 of 13 passes for two touchdowns, and wide receiver “Bullet” Bob Hayes had 144 yards receiving on five catches. Dallas also rushed for 178 yards.
*1972 – Miami Dolphins 20, Browns 14 – AFC divisional playoffs – at the Orange Bowl – The Dolphins were headed to a perfect 17-0 record and a Super Bowl championship, but the Browns gave them arguably their stiffest test of the season.
Cleveland went ahead 14-13 with 8:11 left on Mike Phipps’ 27-yard TD pass to wide receiver Fair Hooker. But the Dolphins came back with an 80-yard drive for the game-winning score on Jim Kiick’s eight-yard TD run. A 35-yard pass to former Browns wideout Paul Warfield was the key play on that march.
With the help of a five-yard return of a blocked Don Cockroft punt for a TD, Miami went ahead 10-0 in the first quarter and the rout looked to be on. But the Browns, who finished 10-4 to gain the AFC’s lone wild-card berth, fought back, cutting it to 10-7 on a five-yard scramble for a TD by Phipps and then going ahead.
Phipps did a lot of good things, but he completed just 9 of 23 passing attempts for but 131 yards with five interceptions.
Ohio State product Bo Scott rushed for a game-high 94 yards on 16 carries.
Expecting that Phipps would continue to develop, the Browns thought they would be going to the playoffs regularly. But it would be eight seasons before they returned.
*1988 – Houston Oilers 24, Browns 23 – AFC wild-card playoffs – at Cleveland Stadium – Six days earlier on that same field, the Browns rallied from a 23-7 third-quarter to beat the Oilers 28-23 and earn a spot in the playoffs as a wild card. But in the rematch, it was the Browns who blew a third-quarter lead, 16-14, and lost.
Quarterback Mike Pagel, who had just returned from an injury, really wasn’t healthy enough to play, but he was pressed into duty after Don Strock got hurt and had to leave the game.
Pagel did a good job, hitting 17 of 25 passes for 179 yards and two TDs with one interception. His scores both went to wide receiver Webster Slaughter covering 14 and two yards, the latter coming with 31 seconds left to cut the lead to one. But Cleveland was unable to recover the onside kick.
Slaughter had five receptions overall for 58 yards, while wideout Reggie Langhorne added six catches for 57 yards.
Earnest Byner rushed for 57 yards on nine carries.
The Browns’ other points came on 33-, 26- and 28-yard field goals by Matt Bahr.
Too bad video replay did not exist then. If it had, then the Browns might have won. Clay Matthews scooped up what was clearly a Warren Moon fumbled lateral and returned it two yards for a TD in the third quarter, but it was instead ruled to be an incomplete pass.
As such, a season that began with high hopes but then began disintegrating right away because of a historic number of injuries to quarterbacks, was over.
