Mount Rushmore of Browns Mount Rushmores

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series of stories about the Mount Rushmore-worthy people, places and things in Browns history. Today we look at the team overall.

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By STEVE KING

After focusing on just the players – the best players – at a number of positions, and position areas, in the first, just-concluded Mount Rushmore series, this new series, Mount Rushmore, Take 2, will feature on everything – and everyone else – concerning the Browns.

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With that, then, let’s start at the top – and the beginning, in more ways than one – as we launch Take 2. Let’s put together all the people in the history of the Browns and come up with a Mount Rushmore.

As indicated, this isn’t just any ol’ Mount Rushmore of the Browns, but rather THE Mount Rushmore of the four most important people – in any realm – in the history of the club from its first season of 1946 to the present.

That is, these are the men who, when you think of the Browns, you think of them.

Determining the members of this Mount Rushmore, all of whom are Pro Football Hall of Famers, wasn’t hard at all. In fact, 75 percent of it was set almost 65 years ago, at the end of the 1955 season, when the Browns, in their first 10 seasons of existence, finished a run in which they made it to the league championship 10 times, winning seven titles.

It was an unprecedented run in pro football then. It is an unprecedented now. And it will remain an unprecedented run for as long as pro football is played.

Guaranteed.

The pillars of that run were head coach and general manager Paul Brown, who was with team from 1946-62, quarterback Otto Graham (1946-55) and kicker/left tackle Lou Groza (1946-59 and 1961-67).

The last – but certainly not least, because there is no least here — member of this Mount Rushmore is running back Jim Brown (1957-65). His inclusion on Mount Rushmore became a certainly 10 years after the title run, and 55 years ago, when he retired following the 1965 season.

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Here they are:

PAUL BROWN

A former Massillon High School quarterback and then the school’s head coach on the way to becoming head coach at Ohio State and then in Cleveland, he’s the man for whom the team is named, the man who built the club piece by piece and the man who coached it. He was light years ahead of his time, bringing a slew of innovations to the game and earning the tag of “The Father of Modern Football.” Because of those innovations and that 10-year run, he might also be the game’s greatest head coach ever.

OTTO GRAHAM

No team can be good consistently, as those early Browns teams were, without a great quarterback, and he was certainly that, including in being his very best on the very biggest stages. Because winning is the No. 1 job of any quarterback, and with the fact he was the ultimate winner, Graham has been called by some the greatest quarterback of all-time.

LOU GROZA

Like Paul Brown an Ohio guy through and through in being a product of  Martins Ferry High School and Ohio State, he is called “The Father of Modern Kicking” for the way, with his being so good at it, that he took what had been an obscure part of the game and underscored its tremendous importance. That the award given to college football’s best kicker every season is named for him, says it all.

JIM BROWN

Without question the greatest player at any position in the game’s history, he put up, in his nine seasons, mind-blowing rushing statistics, the likes of which had never been seen – or even thought possible —  before.

NEXT: Special teams assistant coaches.

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