By STEVE KING
Here we go.
I say all the time that this website, brownsdailydose.com, is one in which you’re going to read something here that you’re not going to read anywhere else — ANYWHERE else.
And oh, yes, it will be interesting and/or thought-provoking, too. You’ll walk away saying to yourself, “Wow! That’s cool. I didn’t know that.”
So, then, instead of writing about the Browns’ big game against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium, the one they desperately, absolutely have to win if this season is to have even a ghost of a chance of being the special one it was predicted to be — instead of pointing out that some team is going to get hot down the stretch in this tight race and win the AFC North, and there’s no reason why that team can’t be the Browns — I’m going to talk about what happened exactly 57 years ago on Sunday.
Huh?
Why?
Because that event long ago was important not only in the grand scheme of things in team history, leading to an NFL Championship Game victory over Baltimore’s former team, the Colts, but also in the Browns’ current situation, this is the story for today.
Call it a back to the future kind of story, the kind I like to do since it links the past to the present and even the future in a believable way.
It was on Dec. 12. 1964 that the Browns, in a nationally-televised Saturday afternoon game before a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium, walloped their bitter arch rivals, the New York Giants, 52-20 in the regular-season finale to squeeze past the St. Louis Cardinals by a half-game to clinch the Eastern Conference title for the first time in seven years. This win, coupled with their 42-20 triumph at Cleveland seven weeks before, buried in a big way the Giants, who had thwarted the Browns by capturing five of the previous six Eastern championships.
It gave the Browns a lot of momentum going into the game 15 days later against the Colts, who were heavy favorites to win the crown. As it turned out, it was instead the Browns who put the hammer down, winning 27-0.
The Browns on Sunday against the Ravens, who have owned them over the years, need the same kind of big-time, defining performance that they had way back when against the Colts, and, for that matter and just as importantly, also against the Giants, for without the win in New York, there probably would not have been a championship game at Cleveland Stadium.
Can these current Browns get it done?
Well, yes — yes, they can — and I think they will. History has a way of repeating itself, don’t ya know?
