I had to laugh — a lot, not just a little; in fact, I’m still laughing — when I heard about New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick praising effusively nearly every player on the Browns during his conference call with the Cleveland media several days ago.

To hear Belichick tell it, the Browns have a Dawg Pound-ful of future Pro Football Famers, and as a result, his Patriots might as well not bother showing up for Sunday’s game at FirstEnergy Stadium. After all, they’re just going to get wiped off the face of the earth anyway, right?

What a snow job! What a ruse! What a bunch of baloney!

And what a great memory!

For you see, Belichick has done this type of thing before, including almost 28 years ago when he was head coach of the Browns.

It happened in the days leading up to Cleveland’s trip to play the Dallas Cowboys in a nationally-televised Saturday afternoon game on Dec. 4, 1994 at Texas Stadium.

The Browns had a good team. They were on the way to finishing 11-5 and earning an AFC wind-card spot, making the playoffs for the first time in five years.

But the Cowboys were great. They were the two-time defending Super Bowl champions.

Belichick knew he had to lull the Cowboys to sleep in order to have a chance to level the playing field and pull off the upset. And so he had his guys from their days together with the New York Football Giants, such as linebackers Carl Banks and former Ohio Stater Pepper Johnson, two go-to players for the media, to help instigate the trickeration.

No matter the question, all of the Browns players, and their head coach, made the Cowboys into the greatest ever, individually and as a team overall. The praise was so thick that you could cut it with a knife — but only with a big, sharp one.

It worked. After one of their team buses was damaged and disabled when a motorist, distracted by the fact he was eating chicken as he drove, ran a red light and crashed into the side of the vehicle, the Browns eventually got to the stadium and got their minds right to put on a show.

As an aside, what In the world is it about motorcades in Dallas that they just don’t go as planned?

Anyway, the Browns won 19-14, holding off the Cowboys who, after an 86-yard march, were denied the winning touchdown when safety Eric Turner tackled Jay Novacek two inches from the goal line after the tight end caught a pass from quarterback Troy Aikman on the game’s final play.

Belichick and his defensive coordinator, Nick Saban, immediately, and  joyfully, hugged each other on the field after they had guessed right that the Cowboys would run the slant route and they collectively called a defense to put Turner into position to thwart it — barely.

The charged-up Browns used the dramatic victory to impress upon a national audience of their legitimacy, and as a catalyst to make the postseason.

Let’s hope that Belichick’s new team doesn’t repeat history against his old one nearly three decades later.

Steve King