Former Browns wide receiver Gary Collins caught 70 touchdown passes – 70! – and caught three scoring passes in a championship game, but now he can’t catch a break.
Ex-Cleveland left tackle Dick Schafrath was a bodyguard for three Pro Football Hall of Fame running backs – three! – and also a bodyguard for one of the most prolific quarterbacks of his era, but now the people who really need to stand up for him, aren’t doing it.
Former Browns linebacker Walt Michaels and one of his longtime teammates, tackle Bob Gain, were two of the greatest players on the greatest defense in the NFL for an entire decade, but now no one is defending them.
So what gives?
That will be my thoughts all day today as voters from the HOF Selection Committee hunker down in a conference room at the official hotel of Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, Cal. to determine the Hall’s Class of 2016, which will be announced late this afternoon. It’s also what I think about 24/7/365 when the HOF is on my mind and, in fact, it’s what I promise you I will continue to think about until justice is served and any – or, preferably, all – of these former Browns are duly recognized for the many extraordinary things they accomplished and get their busts in Canton.
In my humble opinion, Collins, who was taken in the first round, at No. 4 overall, in the 1962 NFL Draft out of Maryland and then went on to a 10-year (1962-71) career with the Browns, heads the list. To catch 70 TD passes at a time when cornerbacks and safeties could just about commit assault with their coverage tactics and not get penalized, is nothing short of amazing.
He caught 331 passes overall, second in history on a club with no less than three pass catchers in the HOF, for 5,299 yards, averaging an even 16 yards per reception.
The best players shine the brightest on the biggest stages, and Collins did that as well, catching three touchdown passes – three – in the 1964 NFL Championship Game to lead the Browns to a 27-0 beatdown of the supposedly unbeatable Baltimore Colts. He was named the game’s Most Valuable Player and won a car for his efforts.
Who else has ever caught three TD passes in a league title game?
I’m waiting.
I’m still waiting.
And waiting.
That’s what I thought.
Like the other three players in question, Collins was on winning teams – a key contributor, in fact. He was a teammate of Schafrath for all of his career, and together they played four times in the NFL Championship Game, winning that one title, made it to the playoffs two other times and never had a losing season.
Hmmm. Great players on great teams? Usually that’s enough to get a player into the HOF, but for whatever reason, that’s not, unfortunately, the case in the instances of these two men.
Schafrath, a product of Wooster High School and Ohio State who was a second-round draft choice in 1959, played 13 years for the Browns, protecting the blind side of quarterback Frank Ryan, who threw 117 touchdown passes from 1963-67, including the three to Collins in the 1964 title game, and also opened holes for HOF backs Jim Brown, Bobby Mitchell and Leroy Kelly. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.
Schafrath, who, like Collins, retired after the 1971 season, made it to six Pro Bowls, the same as Kelly. Kelly’s in the Hall, so why isn’t Schafrath there as well?
The best defense in the NFL in the 1950s belonged to the Browns, which is probably surprising to many of you since the offensive stars – nine made it into the HOF – dominated that era for the club. Only two players from those defenses, middle guard Bill Willis and end Len Ford, are in the HOF, which is a disgrace.
Michaels, who was the latter of the Browns’ two second-round draft picks in 1951 out of tiny Washington & Lee, played for the Green Bay Packers in his rookie season and then returned to Cleveland in 1952 and began a 10-year career with the Browns. He was tabbed for four Pro Bowls.
Gain was born in Akron and drafted in the first round in 1951 out of Kentucky by the Packers, but he began his NFL career in Cleveland the following year. He spent all of 1953 and nearly all of ’54 serving in the Air Force before returning to the Browns for good in ’55. He played 12 years in all before retiring after the 1964 season, in which he broke his leg, necessitating the Browns to scramble to make the trade with the New York Giants to get Dick Modzelewski. Gain made it to five Pro Bowls, one more than Ford and tied for the most for any defensive player in Browns history.
To see the HOF Selection Committee’s Seniors Committee, which concerns itself with players whose initial eligibility period for the Hall has expired, continue to nominate players whose qualifications are less than those of this stellar quartet from the Browns, is disappointing and frustrating, to say the least.
I wish I could say with any degree of certainty that it’s going to change in regards to these men getting inducted into the HOF, but I can’t. If it hasn’t happened to this point, then I don’t see what will be different to cause it to happen at some point.
It may be that Gary Collins, Dick Schafrath, Walt Michaels and Bob Gain will forever be on the outside looking in at the Hall, being relegated to what HOF Vice President of Communications and Exhibits Joe Horrigan likes to term “the Hall of the Very Good.”
But they were better than that, deserve more than that as their legacy.
And as for ex-Browns cornerbacks Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, and outside linebacker Clay Matthews, they were all great players whose qualifications would have been enhanced greatly by having gotten to just one Super Bowl. In fact, it might have been enough to put them over the top. But we all know how that turned out.
Finally, two other players – one from way back and one from the modern era – to keep in mind are guard Jim Ray Smith, a five-time Pro Bowler who was with the Browns from 1956-62, and defensive lineman Michael Dean Perry, who also made it to five Pro Bowls (tying him with Gain for the most by a defensive player) in a Cleveland career that spanned from 1988-94. But they likely will never get into the Hall, either, which is a shame.
