The day the Browns upended Lenny Moore, John Unitas, and the Colts
Saturday was the 61st anniversary — which is 60 years too long — of the last time the Browns won the NFL championship.
It was on Dec. 27, 1964 that the Browns, full 11-point underdogs, dominated the mighty Baltimore Colts 27-0 at Cleveland Stadium before a standing-room-only crowd of 79,544.
Browns owner Art Modell said going into the game that if there had been more time, they could have sold 200,000 tickets. That’s not an exaggeration. Things like that have never been an exaggeration, even way back then, when it comes to the best fanbase in all of pro sports.
The Browns knew entering that cold, gray day that they would need to play a complete game to win — the Colts were that good, having led the NFL in most points scored, and fewest points allowed, during the regular season, in addition to being led by one of the best quarterbacks of all-time in John Unitas — and they did just that, turning in what is still the best overall team performance in their history. They held Unitas to just 95 yards passing, and they riddled the Colts secondary with their own passing attack as Frank Ryan threw three touchdowns to wide receiver Gary Collins.
The game turned on a play in the second quarter. We talked recently about the greatest defensive play in Browns history, when middle guard Bill Willis somehow brought down from behind the fastest player in the league, running back Gene “Choo-Choo” Roberts, to save a touchdown as they went on to beat the New York Giants 8-3 on Dec. 17, 1950 at Cleveland Stadium in a special American Conference playoff game to decide who would make it to the NFL title contest against the Los Angeles Rams. It was a victory the Browns had to have to get to the game they had to win to validate their greatness in the bigger league after having spent the previous four seasons dominating the All-America Football Conference.
This play in 1964 ranks as the second-biggest defensive play in Browns history because, without it, they would not have have beaten the Colts to win what is still their last league championship. It is also their only league title that was not part of the Browns’ great run during their first 10 years of existence from 1946-55 when they made it to the league title game 10 straight times, capturing seven championships. It is the most successful streak in pro football history.
As mentioned, the Browns knew they could not make any major mistakes if they expected to win, and it was into the second quarter and they were holding their own against Baltimore in a scoreless game. So far, so good.
The Colts, working from their own 23, decided to take advantage of a Cleveland pass rush that was overwhelming — physically dominating, really — the great Baltimore offensive line and swarming around Unitas like bees and bottling up talented Lenny Moore in the running game. They called a screen pass to Moore.
“Go ahead, Cleveland, and let those rushers pour in on Unitas,” the Colts determined, “and we will just toss it out to what should be a wide-open Moore on our left side.” Just in case Moore needed it, but they didn’t think they would need it, the Colts sent h way a bodyguard in Jim Parker, the Toledo Scott High School and Ohio State product who was the best guard in the league. He would wipe out any Browns in the area.
The Colts set it up perfectly — and executed nearly perfectly — as 10 Cleveland defenders focused on Unitas and went after him full-force once again.
The only Brown who wasn’t fooled — who read the play correctly and stayed home to the other side of the field — was ninth-year right linebacker Galen Fiss.
None of the Colts — not even Unitas, Moore and Parker, all Pro Football Hall of Famers — noticed he was there. Like a ballet dancer, Fiss deftly and quickly manuvered his way around the unsuspecting Parker and then went into attack mode, crashing into, and upending, Moore, stopping him dead in his tracks before he ever got started.
Gib Shanley’s call of the play was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. It may be the only time that occurred in the iconic Browns radio play-by-play announcer’s 24-year career.
Indeed, the crowd and Shanley saw — everyone clearly saw, actually — that if Fiss had not been there, Moore would raced untouched 77 yards for a touchdown. In fact, he could have run the rest of the day — all the way to another county, if he felt like it — and no one would have caught him.
And if he had scored, then it would not have given the Colts just a 7-0 lead, but it would also have provided them a huge emotional lift and gotten them jump-started. They would have cracked the code. Conversely, it would have broken the Browns’ backs. Their well-thought-out plan, while a nice try, would have been foiled.
But with Fiss’s heroics, the Browns, whose confidence had been growing with each and every play, took a quantum leap forward in the belief that this really could happen and they could beat the Colts. Meanwhile, the Colts began to be convinced that this was going to be a day in which nothing they did was going to be good enough. Their invincibility was compromised. They were human after all.
From that point on, the clubs exchanged personas, with the Browns becoming the team to beat and the Colts morphing into the ones trying to catch them. Baltimore never seriously threatened the rest of the day, and the Browns, after getting to halftime still in a scoreless tie, became even stronger defensively in the second half while finally getting untracked offensively en route to the lopsided win, after which the fans stormed the field and began celebrating with the new-found champions.
Years later, when Fiss, long since retired, was attending an NFL alumni event, he was asked by an official who was acting as his personal host if he wanted to say hello to Moore, who was on the other side of the big ballroom.
“Sure!,” Fiss said enthusiastically. “I have never gotten the chance to meet him.”
Moore had his back to them as they approached. When the official tapped him on the shoulder, Moore turned around, his eyes got as big as saucers and he exclaimed, “Galen Fiss, how in the world did you ever tackle me?!!”
Wonder if “Choo-Choo” Roberts ever asked Bill Willis the same thing?
Steve King
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