REMEMBERING BUTCH DAVIS AND DASHED HOPES

By STEVE KING

As the Browns get ready to open training camp in a few days, one of their first head coaches of the expansion era, Butch Davis, is in the news – but for a horrible reason.

Davis, beginning his third season at Florida International, was quoted on the front page of the sports section of Monday’s USA Today.

“Tragically, we lost a great young man in Emmanuel Lubin last night,” he said Sunday after Lubin, a 21-year-old defensive back at FIU, was killed in a car crash on Saturday. He had started all 13 games last season for the Panthers, who set a school record for wins in a 9-4 overall finish (they were 6-2 and tied for second place in the East Division of Conference USA).

Both records were a victory better than what they had been in Davis’s first year at the school in 2017 when FIU was 8-5 overall and 5-3 (second) in the East.

This is the third stop for Davis as a college head coach after having been at first Miami (Fla.) and then North Carolina. He is 80-52 overall. That includes NC’s self-imposed vacating of 16 wins in 2008 and ’09 for violating NCAA violations.

It was after the 2000 season at Miami, when the Hurricanes went 11-1, won the Sugar Bowl and finished second in the country, that the Browns vigorously pursued Davis, the hottest caching candidate on the market, and ended up landing him. He took a team that had finished a combined 5-27 in the first two seasons of its rebirth and guided it to a 7-9 mark. The Browns started 3-1 and then 6-4 before losing four in a row and five of their last six.

The 2002 season was just the opposite, as the Browns were just 4-5 before catching fire in winning five of their last seven to finish 9-7 and gain a wild-card playoff berth. The Browns then had a 24-7 third-quarter lead in their postseason game at Pittsburgh, but collapsed from there and lost 36-33.

That season, which produced what is still the Browns’ only playoff appearance of the expansion era, ignited a lot of hope. But it was dashed when the Browns went belly-up in Davis’s last two seasons, going 5-11 and 4-12, the latter of which he resigned in disgrace with five games left after a 58-48 loss at Cincinnati.

There is even more hope for the Browns now. Fans are keeping their fingers crossed that it turns out much differently.