The intent of every NFL team is to get the best head coach and the best quarterback possible. Those are the two most important spots on any club.
But along with that, the head coach and quarterback must be well-suited for one another. That is, they must have a great relationship. They must speak the same language and be on the same page with one another. They have to have what amounts to a professional marriage.
Sure, they can have spats, but only behind closed doors, where what is said is hidden from others. Then they emerge as one, and they go forward as a professional couple, joined at the hip, needing each other – needing that great relationship – for both of them to be successful.
That’s why we say that the quarterback’s main job is to win games. If the head coach doesn’t win games, then he gets fired. So he has to find a winning quarterback. If he doesn’t, then he’s in trouble. It’s all inter-related. It’s all one big big circle.
We’ve said all this before, but why bring it up again today? Because this is a historic – and educational – day not just in Browns history, but that of the NFL as well.
It was 56 years ago today, on Dec. 31, 1959, that the Browns made a big trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers, acquiring quarterback Len Dawson and wide receiver Gern Nagler in exchange for two starters, wide receiver Preston Carpenter and right safety Junior Wren.
Browns head coach Paul Brown was ecstatic with the deal. Looking for a replacement for Otto Graham, who had retired two years earlier, he had wanted to snare Dawson, from Alliance (Ohio) High School, with the No. 6 overall pick in the 1957 NFL Draft, but Pittsburgh, which had the No. 5 choice, beat Brown to it, leaving the coach to settle for some fullback from Syracuse named Jim Brown. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
The Steelers were a rag-tag bunch back then, mired in losing and with a revolving door of head coaching misfits. Dawson had been a great player at Purdue, but he got sucked into that negative vortex in Pittsburgh and did not play well. That’s not surprising, because at about the same time, the Steelers spit out some Pittsburgh sandlot quarterback named John Unitas. Perhaps you’ve also heard of him.
Both Dawson and Unitas were stars in waiting, but with no head coach in Pittsburgh to guide and nurture them, they were doomed to fail. And they did.
Unitas went to the Baltimore Colts and blossomed under the tutelage of head coach Weeb Ewbank, a former Browns assistant from 1949-53, and then Don Shula, a product of Painesville (Ohio) Harvey High School and John Carroll University in Cleveland who was a cornerback for the Browns in 1951 and ’52. Unitas bonded perfectly with those Pro Football Hall of Fame head coaches and began charting his own route to Canton.
But while Dawson and Paul Brown were both Hall of Famers themselves and were in need of each other at that time – Brown was looking for a long-term fix at quarterback, and Dawson was looking for a head coach who would believe in him and could develop him – the fit wasn’t right.
As such, Dawson’s career continued to stagnate. He played little in his two seasons (1960-61) at Cleveland. It wasn’t until he went to the AFL’s Dallas Texans, the forerunners of the Kansas City Chiefs, in 1962 and was reunited with his assistant coach at Purdue, now head coach Hank Stram, that his star began to really shine.
That’s just one example of two great people – a quarterback and a head coach – needing that bond with one another to soar together. There are others.
Frank Ryan was just a so-so quarterback with the Los Angeles Rams, and didn’t do much in 1962 under Paul Brown after he had been traded to Cleveland. But when Blanton Collier took over as head coach in 1963, they immediately bonded – both were very cerebral – and Ryan’s career soared.
Bill Nelsen got dragged down by the losing and poor coaching in Pittsburgh, but he, too, blossomed once he was traded to the Browns in 1968 and was taken under Collier’s wing.
Brian Sipe muddled along after being drafted by the Browns in 1972, but that changed – dramatically so – when Sam Rutigliano was hired as head coach in 1978. Rutigliano lasted only a half-season as coach – and won just one more game — after Sipe bolted for the big money of the USFL following the 1983 season.
Here’s a little different theme: Bernie Kosar was just OK as a rookie in 1985 with the Browns, but when head coach Marty Schottenheimer brought in Lindy Infante as offensive coordinator in 1986, the Youngstown Boardman (Ohio) High School graduate meteorically ascended to near the top of the heap of AFC quarterbacks. It’s not surprising, then, that Kosar’s career took a hit – literally and figuratively – when Infante left after the 1987 season to become head coach of the Green Bay Packers. Kosar got crunched and blew out his throwing elbow when the Browns missed a blitz pickup in the 1988 season opener at Kansas City.
And keep in mind that when Bill Belichick was head coach in Cleveland from 1991-95, he didn’t have a great quarterback and he didn’t win (Kosar was a shell of himself by that time).
He didn’t win in 2000 when he went to the New England Patriots. It was not until 2001 when he inserted some sixth-round draft choice named Tom Brady into the lineup that the Patriots started winning in bunches and Belichick became known as a great coach.
So as the Browns try to piece things back together for 2016, they must find the right head coach and the right quarterback, and also have them establish the right relationship with one another. But before that happens, they must find the right general manager, so he can use his knowledge and experience to find those two men and that chemistry.
It isn’t an easy, and it isn’t an exact science. There’s a lot of thinking from the gut that goes into it.
But if the Browns want to get out of the sewer, then they have to do it.
And think about this: The Browns have failed miserably to find all that for so long – for all of the expansion era, really – that the odds are with them to finally hit the target and get it right.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
