Friday, Sept. 4 (AM) – The Browns’ great run through the last half of the 1980s began to end on this date 27 years ago.
It was Sept. 4, 1988 in the regular-season opener at Kansas City when safety Lloyd Burruss came clean on a blitz early in the second quarter and hit Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar just after he released the ball, tearing ligaments in his throwing elbow.
He missed six games, returned for eight contests and then tore ligaments in the next-to-last contest at Miami, permanently ending his season.
Kosar recovered fully from the knee injury, but never from the elbow injury. He changed his motion to where he was shot-putting the ball instead of throwing it naturally. He continued to be very effective, but not as much as he should have been, and would have been.
With Kosar leading the way, the Browns won the Central Division title in each of his first three seasons since he arrived in 1985 as the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Supplemental Draft out of Miami (Fla.). They had also made it to the AFC Championship Game in 1986 and ’87, suffering heartbreaking losses to the Denver Broncos both times.
As such, the product of Boardman High School in suburban Youngstown was one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL entering that 1988 season and was expected to pass the Browns to their first Super Bowl appearance, and perhaps even a title.
The injury at Kansas City short-circuited all that, however, and just as Kosar was never the same, neither were the Browns. Kosar was not the only quarterback the Browns lost to injury that year, as joining him were Gary Danielson, Mike Pagel and Don Strock, who was coaxed out of retirement and signed off a golf course when Kosar was KO’d for the second time and Pagel wasn’t quite ready to return.
That number of injuries at the most important position in team sports would have devastated most teams, but the Browns had so much talent at so many other positions that they were able to weather the storm, finishing 10-6 and making the playoffs for a fourth straight year in 1988, but this time as a wild card. They lost to the Houston Oilers in the wild-card round.
It frustrated everybody in the organization so much that head coach Marty Schottenheimer was unceremoniously fired at the end of the season and replaced by longtime defensive genius Bud Carson. Ironically, Schottenheimer ended up getting hired almost immediately by none other the Chiefs, who had caused this whole thing to begin to unravel.
Star running back Earnest Byner was also traded to the Washington Redskins.
The Browns finished 9-6-1, won the division crown and went back to the conference title game in 1989, once again losing to the Broncos.
But that was the end of the Browns’ impressive half-decade. They fell flat on their faces in 1990, going a then franchise-worst 3-13.
They would not get back to the playoffs – nor have a winning record — until 1994, and by then, nearly all of their key players from the last half of the 1980s were gone.
So, considering all this then, it is understandable when longtime Browns fans worry about Johnny Manziel’s elbow problems. They know how devastating they can be for a young quarterback.
By Steve King
