A gift from Pittsburgh

In the five-year span from 1963 through 1967, the Browns’ Frank Ryan was arguably the most productive quarterback in the NFL.

He threw three touchdown passes in the 27-0 victory over the Baltimore Colts in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, and he led the Browns back to the title contest the following season.

But by the end of that 1967 season, he was beat up, battling through an assortment of injuries. As such, then, he was a meet shadow of himself from what he had been when he took over as the starter in 1963 when Blanton Collier was hired as head coach and put all his faith in him in a quarterback with Jim Ninowski.

Collier, though, because of his loyalty to Ryan, stuck with him for the first several games of the 1968 season, but it was evident by the struggles of the offense and the team overall that he was finished.

The Browns still had a good enough team to compete seriously for a trip to the Super Bowl, but they needed some help at quarterback. And that came from Bill Nelsen, who had struggled in Pittsburgh not because he was a bad quarterback, but because he was surrounded with a lot of bad players on bad Steelers teams. Sending that they may need to make a change of quarterback in 1968, the Browns had traded with their rivals in the offseason to get Nelsen. When the Browns went to him, things changed dramatically. The offense got really good again, and the team started winning again, marching all the way to the league title game, which is now considered the NFC Cihampionshop Game after the merger of the two leagues in 1970. The Browns lost to the Colts in the title game, but with Nelsen playing a whole season in 1969, they marched  to the title game again. With a trip to the Super Bowl once more on the line, they fell to the Minnesota Vikings. 

Nelsen, however, had health issues, too, and by the end of the 1969 season, it was starting to take a toll on him. He didn’t last much longer with the Browns, eventually being replaced for good in 1972 by Mike Phipps.

But even though his time as a starter was short, Nelsen had proven to be one of the key figures in the history of the team because of the way he maximized his opportunity in two straight seasons. Indeed, with good players all around him, Nelsen blossomed.

All this is why he is the subject in part 7 of this Roy Hobbs series of Browns players who came out of nowhere to do big things.

NEXT: A change for the better.

Steve King