In the 10-plus years of the existence of Browns Daily Dose, we’ve spent a good chunk of time writing about the Mount Rushmore-worthy players and even coaches in Browns history.

These pieces have been fun to write, but also difficult, because with only four spots available to carve out on the side of that mountain, we’ve forced to leave out a lot of incredibly-good candidates.

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That’s not really the case, though, with a Mount Rushmore we’ve never discussed, and I’ve never seen discussed anywhere. It is focused not necessarily on specific players and coaches, per se, even though they’re obviously part of it, but rather on the franchise overall as it applies to the history of pro football.

That is, this is a Mount Rushmore of the four best — most outstanding, most unbelievable and most impactful — franchise achievements.

The four “figures” are pretty easy to pick. It took me less than a minute to do it. In no particular order — although it will probably look that way to you as you scroll down through the rest of this piece — here are three of them:

1) Playing in 10 straight league championship games — in the first 10 years of the franchise from 1946-55 — and winning seven titles. Ten consecutive seasons. Never failing to qualify to play to win it all. Seven crowns. Teams always want to start fast in games. How about a team starting fast in its lifetime?

2) Having arguably the greatest head coach ever in Paul Brown; having the arguably the greatest quarterback of all-time in Otto Graham (his entire career spanned those aforementioned first 10 years of the franchise); having unquestionably the greatest player overall in history in running back Jim Brown; having the most important player in the history of kicking in Lou Groza in the way he unveiled the importance of that part of the game, thus becoming the man for whom the annual award for college football’s best kicker is named; and being the most culturally important team in being the first to use Black players, with Pro Football Hall of Famers Bill Willis and Marion Motley, to permanently break the color barrier not just in football, but also in pro sports overall, coming out of World War II.

3) Being, through Paul Brown, “The Father of Modern Football,” “The Team of Modern Football” with the all the innovations by the Browns that are a big part of the framework of today’s game such as year-round assistant coaches; the intricate, precise passing offense, primarily the spread, or West Coast; playbooks; classroom teaching; the reliance on speed over size; face masks on helmets; and the practice squad, which was originally called the taxi squad. Indeed, as we’ve said here often, the trophy given to the winning team in the Super Bowl should be named for Paul Brown instead of Vince Lombardi, with all due respect to the iconic former Green Bay Packers head coach.

So, then, what is the fourth — and final — part of this Browns Mount Rushmore?

We’ll tell you next time.

Hint: It has strong ties to this part of the year and also the Browns’ opponent on Sunday at Huntington Bank Field, the San Francisco 49ers.

Steve King

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