Sam Rutigliano is well known for all of his great quips during his 6-1/2 years as head coach of the Browns.

He is, without doubt, the most quotable head coach in team history.

Almost all of the quips are funny, and they still draw laughter — or at least smiles and a chuckle — today from people who were around when he made them.

But there’s a quip — dripping in seriousness — that has, unfortunately, never received much attention, let alone fanfare, that might be the best and most valuable of them all. And that’s a shame, because it had a lot to do with turning around the Browns’ fortunes after their shockingly horrible start to the 1980 season.

Rutigliano walked into the solemn, quiet Browns locker room following the 16–7 loss to the Houston Oilers on Monday NightFootball on Sept. 15 at Cleveland Stadium that dropped their record to 0–2. He looked around and then took the occasion to speak up. It was not hard for him to be heard, because there was really nobody else talking. They were still trying to figure out what had just happened.

“What if we won our last 14 games?,” he said to the players.

As quiet as it had been, it became even more so.

Win 14 in a row?! Come on, Coach, we can’t even win one in a row right now.

That was what he read as he surveyed the expressions on their faces.

“They looked at me like I was crazy,” Rutigliano would say later.

Well, yeah! Ya think?!

It was, though, a stroke of brilliance, of genius — and, of course, of desperation.

Rutigluano believed it with every fiber of his being. He had to. It was the only thing that he could say in an effort to rally the troops.

But at the same time, doing so – winning 14 straight games, which would’ve been a full season three years earlier, in 1977, before the regular season was expanded — was, actually, not completely out of the realm of possibility. The Browns were good. They were much better than their winless record would seem to indicate. They knew how to win, how to make plays and pull games out in the waning moments. they had all the ingredients.

They just needed to perform better — to rise to their ability level — and to play complementary football with all three facets of the club — offense, defense and special teams — working as one to help each other out.

Now, would it be easy? No, of course, not. It  would be 
downright difficult. The chances for it to happen weren’t good. But again, what else could they do?

As the sting of it all began to subside a little bit over the next couple days, the players started to buy into the plan. They sensed it was the only way out.

Steve King