Back in the late 1950s and early ‘60s when he was a running back and wide receiver for the New York Football Giants, Frank Gifford would have laughed out loud — and then perhaps gotten sick to his stomach — if someone had told him he would, in essence, someday name his son after a player with the hated arch-rival Browns.
Gifford was watching a late 1980s Browns game on TV when the announcer mentioned right tackle Cody Risien.
Hmmm. Gifford liked what he heard.
“Hey, what do think of the name Cody?,” he called into the kitchen to ask his wife, Kathie Lee, who was pregnant with a boy.
She liked it, too. So Cody it was.
Cody Gifford was born in 1990 and just turned 34.
Cody Risien was one of the best right tackles in the game for the decade he played with the Browns, 1979-89. That’s not bad at all — in fact, it’s outstanding — for a guy who was not taken until the seventh round of the 1979 NFL Draft.
It’s why he’s the subject of Part 16 of this Roy Hobbs series of Browns players who have come out of nowhere to do big things.
Risien had the distinction of being one of only a few Browns to play for both of the team’s best quarterbacks over the last almost 60 years, Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar. In 1984, the season after Sipe bolted the Browns to sign with Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals of the USFL, and the year before Cleveland took Kosar with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Expansion Draft, Risien’s worth was clearly proven.
Risien suffered a season-ending knee injury while, for some unknown reason, playing in the fourth quarter of the meaningless preseason finale at Philadelphia. Without Risien there to lock down pass rushers, Paul McDonald, who took over as the starting quarterback, was under siege, getting sacked 55 times. As a result, he struggled, and so did the offense and the team overall. The Browns, who were picked before the season to win the AFC Central title, were just 1-7 at the halfway point, causing head coach Sam Rutigliano, the man who had drafted Risien, to get fired.
NEXT: The one and only.
Steve King
