On this date in Browns history…

On this date in Browns historyCLEVELAND, OH - NOVEMBER 30: Linebackers Eddie Johnson #51 and Chip Banks #56 of the Cleveland Browns tackle running back Ray Wallace of the Houston Oilers during a game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on November 30, 1986 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Browns defeated the Oilers 13-10. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)

Posted By: County Sports Network April 28, 2020

On this date in Browns history…

By STEVE KING

On this date in Browns history Cleveland picked up two notable linebackers through the years (April 29).

The first one, Walt Michaels, was one of the first truly great linebackers they had.

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And the other, Eddie Johnson, was the one who played with as much heart and determination as any player, at any position, in team history.

It was on this date in Browns history (April 29, 1952) that the Browns reacquired Michaels in a trade with the Green Bay Packers for defensive tackle Forrest “Chubby” Grigg and rookie offensive linemen Elmer Costa and Dick Logan, the latter a product of Mansfield High School and Ohio State.

Grigg was the big player in the trade for the Packers. He had been a starter for the Browns since 1948 but couldn’t control his weight, ballooning to over 300 pounds every season, which angered head coach Paul Brown, who liked his players lean and fast. Brown eventually gave up on Grigg and got rid of him.

Michaels had been taken by the Browns out of tiny Washington & Lee in the sixth round in the same 1951 draft that also brought safety/returner Ken Konz, a Cleveland Browns Legend, and Painesville Harvey High School and John Carroll University product Don Shula, a cornerback who became an NFL legend as a head coach. Michaels was traded to the Packers in the 1951 training camp and played for them that season.

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Upon returning to the Browns, Michaels became the starter at left linebacker in their 4-3 alignment in that first season of 1952 and went on to start at all three linebacker spots, but mostly on the outside, through 1961. That ended his 10-year career with Cleveland, but he returned to play the 1963 season with the AFL’s New York franchise, which was in its first year of transitioning its nickname from the Titans to the Jets.

Michaels went on to be head coach of the Jets for six seasons (1977-82), and late in 1980, a year when New York finished just 3-11, his club came to his old stomping grounds of Cleveland Stadium and nearly knocked off the Browns in their magical Kardiac Kids season. The Browns, on the way to finishing 11-5 and capturing the AFC Central title for the first time in nine years, won 17-14 in typical Kardiac Kids fashion on a five-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Brian Sipe to running back Greg Pruitt in the fourth quarter.

Michaels also was the head coach in 1984 and ’85 of owner Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals, a USFL team that had Sipe and also future Browns head coach Chris Palmer, who served as the wide receiver coach in the first year and offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach in the second one. Yes, that was Sipe and Palmer – from two different eras in Browns history – working together.

Michaels passed away last July 19 at the age of 89.

Eddie Johnson came to the Browns exactly 29 years after Michaels was reacquired in that trade. Also, on this date in Browns history (April 29, 1981) when Johnson was the first player chosen by Cleveland on the second and final day of the 12-round draft, as a seventh-rounder, at No. 187 overall, out of Louisville.

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Despite the fact that the Browns tried every year to find someone bigger, stronger, faster and better so they could replace him, the 6-foot-1, 217-pound Johnson used determination, commitment and the fact he was one of the hardest hitters in team history – he was nicknamed “The Assassin” — to hang onto his roster spot and carve out a productive 10-year career (through 1990) in Cleveland.

It was in 1989, in a Week 2 game against the Jets in Cleveland, that I saw the hardest hit I ever witnessed in-person on a football field. It was by Johnson.

The Jets’ Roger Vick, after opening the day’s scoring on a 39-yard touchdown run, tried later in the game to vault over the stack from the Cleveland 1 for another score at the Dawg Pound end of Cleveland Stadium. Johnson saw Vick get the ball and timed it right, meeting Vick head-on when both were at the apex of their jumps. The cracking noise that ensued sounded like a gun going off, or a car running into a concrete wall. Vick was stonewalled, slumping to the turf just behind the line of scrimmage. Fortunately, he was OK.

Johnson, whose son played basketball for the former Midpark High School, located not far from Baldwin-Wallace University, where the Browns practiced when his dad was playing, died on Jan. 21, 2003, just 13 days shy of what would have been his 44th birthday, following a two-year battle with colon cancer. It was a sad, sad day in Northeast Ohio.

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