Death of Ernie Davis
By Steve King
As you read in my last post, the death of Browns safety Don Rogers just before the start of training camp in 1986 had huge, far-reaching effects on the team.
It might well have been the event that started the Browns on the path to eventually moving to Baltimore nine years later.
The death of Ernie Davis in May 1962 was monumental, too, as it signaled the beginning of the end of Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach Paul Brown’s time in Cleveland.
After watching the two big HOF backs from Green Bay, Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung, run over his Browns in a 49-17 Packers win in 1961, Brown got the idea of pairing a big back with the one he already had, Jim Brown.
Jim Brown’s running mate was Bobby Mitchell, a quick, shifty scatback type.
So in a blockbuster deal in the ensuing offseason, Paul Brown sent Mitchell to Washington for the rights to Davis, whom the Redskins had selected at No. 1 overall in the 1962 NFL Draft. Davis had size – he was 6-foot-2 and 212 pounds – and ability after having broken all of Jim Brown’s rushing records at Syracuse along with being the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy.
Art Modell, who had purchased the Browns in January 1961, knew nothing about the trade – or even Paul Brown’s intent to make it – until he heard it on the radio. Modell was furious. To Brown, it was simply business as usual.
Modell and Paul Brown were mismatched right from the start in that the new owner wanted to be involved in every aspect of the team while the coach had never had any interference from the first two Browns owners, Mickey McBride and Dave Jones. Brown didn’t want any, either, from Modell, a New York ad man who had no football background other than being a fan of the Browns’ big rivals, the New York Giants.
Davis never played a down for the Browns, and along the way, Paul Brown and Modell differed on every aspect of the Davis sad saga.
Modell would have eventually fired Brown – they were not on the same page on anything – but the trading of Mitchell was the event that escalated the divide to the nth degree and made the owner begin to think that firing the coach might be the only solution.
The Browns went just 7-6-1 in 1962, Brown’s second-worst record in his 17 seasons in Cleveland. That, along with Modell’s feelings that the coach had alienated himself from some players and was also unwilling to change his ways to adapt to the modern game, was enough for him to unceremoniously fire Brown – the only coach the Browns had ever had and the man for whom the team was named — about 3½ weeks after the end of the season.
Note: Death of Ernie Davis also caused great change was updated 4-2-20
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