JUST LIKE IN 1985, BROWNS NEED BIG ROAD WIN OVER GIANTS

By STEVE KING
Former Browns head coach and now New York Football Giants tight ends coach Freddie Kitchens will be calling the offensive plays that, quite possibly, former Cleveland quarterback Colt McCoy might be executing.
Yeah, the Browns’ game against the Giants at MetLife Stadium on Sunday Night Football has several incredible, almost-too-good-to-be-true sidebar stories.
But the fact of the matter is that … well, those angles really don’t matter. What does matter, though, is that this is a huge game for both teams in terms of the playoffs, the 9-4 Browns trying to secure a playoff spot — likely as a wild card — in the AFC and the 5-8 Giants trying to win the title in an NFC East that looks like an ugly test. That a team three games below .500 at this late stage of the season right in thick of a division race is hard to believe. But that’s the NFL — and sports overall and everything else in the world, for that matter — in 2020.
The Browns need a big ewin, just like they got over the Giants 35 years ago, on Dec. 1, 1985, at Giants Stadium, which was located right next to where MetLife now sets. The situation was the same as in Sunday’s game, but only the teams’ roles were reversed. The Browns came in with just a 6-6 record but were still very much alive in the battle to win the AFC Central, while the Giants, with a much better 8-4 record, were trying to win the NFC East.
Playing with a cire group of players who would win the Super Bowl the following season, and with the fact they were at home, the Giants were solid favorites to beast the Browns, who, though playing much better than they did in 1984 when they finished only 5-11, still hadn’t really established themselves. As evidenced by their .500 mark, they were up one week and down the next. They needed to break out of thst and get a season-altering victory. They did even better than that, earning an era-altering triumph, beating the Giants 35-33 in a game that was televised to most of the country in the early-afternoon time slot.
In a game filled with drama — and roundhouse punches being landed left and right — the Browns won in dramatic fashion as Eric Schubert missed a field goal as time expired. The Browns, who bolted to a 21-7 second-quarter lead and then foind themselves behind 33-21 in the fourth quarter after Schubert hit the latter of the two field goals he did convert that day, got a heroic performance from veteran quarterback Gary Danielson who, with a bad throwing shoulder that made it almost impossible for him to pass, came on for an infective Bernie Kosar, then a rookie, and led the team’s comeback.
And with it, the Browns’ confidence soared, and so did their performance levels and the way they were perceived around the league. It was the kick-start to the great run by the Kosar-led Browns through the last half of the 1980s. They ended up just 8-8, but that was good enough to capture the division title just ahead of the 7-9 Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers, then nearly upset the defending AFC champion Miami Dolphins in the divisional playoffs, blowing out to a 21-3 lead in the third quarter on the running of Earnest Byner before losing 24-21. A year later, they finished 12-4 to win the division once more and gain home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. They made it to the conference title game, the first of three such trips in four years.
Who knows? This 2020 season could be the same kind of season for the Browns, who, like the 1985 version, have a lot of young, talented players and seem to be on the doorstep of something special for a period of years. And, just as was the case 35 years ago, a road win over the New York Football Giants in front of a national television audience would do oh, so much to help that effort along.