Paul Brown grew up in Massillon.

Fritz Heisler was from Massillon as well.

Ditto for Bill Edwards.

Richard Gallagher hailed from Ironton.

John Brickels was a native of Newark.

The early Browns coaches – and most of the players, too – were Ohio guys through and through. Pro football was much more of a regional sports then than it is now. It was nothing back then for a coach or player to work not far at all from their old stomping grounds.

Though he came to the Browns over 40 years later, Dave Adolph, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 79, got to do that as well.

A native of tiny but mighty Mogadore, a little, football-crazy burg tucked on the east side of Akron, he played for the hometown Wildcats and was on their first state championship team in 1954. From there, he went on to play at the University of Akron and later returned there to coach, right after coaching at Shaw High School in East Cleveland.

Adolph also coached at Ohio State in Woody Hayes’ last two years in 1977 and ’78, then for the Browns from 1979-84 as defensive line coach for head coach Sam Rutigliano. After leaving for a season, he returned as head coach Marty Schottenheimer’s defensive coordinator from 1986-88 as the club made back-to-back trips to the AFC Championship Game.

“He was a defensive guru,” Rutigliano said on Monday. “I’m shocked he’s gone. I talked to him a lot, and had talked to him just last week. He had been having some health problems, but he told me he felt like he was doing well.”

Near the end of his career, Adolph worked on special projects for Jim Tressel at Ohio State and then for Jim Harbaugh at the University of San Diego, Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers and Michigan, which is where he was working when we died