Thursday is the 63rd anniversary of the third and final event that made the 1963 Browns offseason not just the worst in team history, or even NFL history, but also in the annals of pro sports overall.
It was on June 4, 1963 that Browns safety Don Fleming was electticuted in a construction accident in Orlando, Fla. exactly a week before his 26th birthday. A native of tiny Shadyside in East Central Ohio, he had played three years with Cleveland and was one of the top young safeties in the league.
This was the third death of a Browns player in just 4-1/2 months. Only two weeks earlier, on May 17, running back Ernie Davis passed away of leukemia without ever playing a down for the Browns. The club had pulled off a blockbuster trade with Washington to acquire his rights just days after the then Redskins selected him No. 1 overall in the 1962 NFL Draft. The Browns gave up standout running back Bobby Mitchell in the deal. Davis was the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, being so honored following his senior season of 1961 at Syracuse, where he broke most of the school records of running back Jim Brown, who would have been his backfield mate in Cleveland.
Davis would have worn jersey No. 45. That, and Fleming’s No. 46, are two of the only five numbers retired by the Browns. One of the others, of course, is Brown’s No. 32.
The 1963 offseason got off to its tragic start on Jan. 18 when Tom
Bloom, a two-way back from Purdue taken by the Browns with the latter of their two sixth-round picks in the 1963 draft, was killed on an icy stretch of Interstate 70 near Dayton while driving back to school with two teammates after a trip back to Bloom’s hometown of Weir, W. Va. He never got to meet his new teammates in Cleveland. Weir is located just 35 miles north of Shadyside, only a 45-minute drive on Ohio 7.
It was an incredibly busy offseason for the Browns even before the three deaths. Two days before Bloom was killed, on Jan. 16, Blanton Collier was named head coach. He replaced founding head coach, and the man for whom the Browns are named, Paul Brown. He had been fired by owner Art Modell a week earlier, on Jan. 9. The two men had had a falling out over the trade to get Davis a year before. Brown, who had also served as the team’s general manager for the 17 years he spent with the Browns, was used to making moves on his own and did not inform Modell of the trade. The owner heard it on the radio and was furious, because, unlike the previous owners, he wanted to have a say on all team affairs. After all that, it was only a matter of time before their relationship got so caustic that Modell determined that a change had to be made.
As it turned out, Collier, an incredibjy bright football man and a great communicator, somehow weathered all the adversity and guided the Browns to a 10-4 record in that first season of 1963, enabling them to finish in second place, just a game behind the New York Giants (11-3) in the Eastern Conference. A year later, in 1964, Collier’s team won the NFL championship for the first time in nine seasons, blanking the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts 27–0.
Collier and Brown were great friends, having worked together in Cleveland for the first eight seasons of the franchise’s existence. Collier was, in fact, Brown’s top assistant. Collier returned to the staff in 1962 after having left to serve as head coach at Kentucky for eight seasons. Because of their relationship, Collier went to Brown and asked for his blessing to take the Browns job because he didn’t want to lose that friendship. According to Collier, Brown told him that it was fine, that he had to do it to further his own career.
However, in 1970, two years after Brown had taken over the expansion Cincinnati Bengals and they joined the NFL and began playing the Browns twice every season, Brown refused to talk to Collier after that first meeting, a 31–27 Browns victory at Cleveland. He just sped off the field afterward without acknowledging Collier, who was waiting to shake hands with him at midfield. Brown said following the game that he was upset that Collier had double-crossed him by accepting the coaching job. Collier was heartbroken. The men never talked again before Collier passed away in 1983.
Steve King
