SAM AND SIPE, SIPE AND SAM, AND THE KARDIAC KIDS ARE BORN

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of stories about former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano as he turns 90 on Thursday.

By STEVE KING

There is a great book about the Kardiac Kids era entitled, “Sam, Sipe and Co.”

Yes, Sam and quarterback Brian Sipe as the headliners, and all the rest of the players on those good, entertaining and fun – we’re always going to emphasize that word – teams in that period in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

And that is in no way, shape or form a slap at the other players, but great teams must have a great head coach and a great quarterback, and those two men must have a great relationship. They’re on not only the same page, but also the same paragraph, the same sentence and even the same word. Rutigliano and Sipe were in lock-step in that regard.

A lot has been made over the years about the Browns selecting Ozzie Newsome in the first round in 1978 in Rutigliano’s first NFL Draft in Cleveland after the coach sent his receivers coach, Richie Kotite, to Tuscaloosa, Ala. with a tape measure to measure the tall, slender Alabama wide receiver’s rear end to see if his frame was big enough to add weight and allow him to block as a tight end. That gave the Browns a Pro Football Hall of Famer, but they had to get someone who could throw the ball to him. And that guy was Sipe, but only after Rutigliano did thorough research about the quarterback, even talking to his father and finding out about how Sipe had been a winner dating all the way back to his playing catcher in the Little League Baseball World Series.

Sipe had had an up-and-down career since first playing for the Browns in 1974, taking three steps forward, one step backward, two steps sideways, two forward, and so on and so forth.

No one was willing to commit to Sipe as the guy, until Rutigliano did it when he arrived. It changed everything and allowed the birth of the Kardiac Kids to happen.

But there was one more major event.