Super Bowl or bust

The Browns and the late Joe DiMaggio have something in common.

That is, the Browns have a streak of 56 going, just like the Baseball Hall of Famer had in 1941.

DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games, still a Major League record. The streak ended in Cleveland, in fact.

The Browns have gone 56 years — the entire history of the game — without even making it to the Super Bowl, let alone winning it. That’s something that also has to end in Cleveland.

Now, to be fair, the Browns have been one win away from making it to the Super Bowl five times since the game started in 1967 (covering the 1966 season). They lost in the NFL (now considered NFC) Championship Game in both 1968 and ’69, and in the AFC Championship Game in 1986, ’87 and ’89, and they have been in the playoffs any number of other times.

Do not confuse them even remotely with another old-line team that has never made it to the Super Bowl, the Detroit Lions. The Lions have been to one NFC Championship Game — just one.

But at the same time, not getting to the Super Bowl, which is the bottom line, is not getting to the Super Bowl, however it happens.

I’m not worried about the Lions, however. I wish them the best, but they’re not my concern. My concern — and yours, too — is with the Browns.

And having said, that, then, enough is enough, and too much is too much. This has to stop, and it has to stop now.

Those Browns teams led by quarterback Bill Nelsen that got close in 1968 and ’69 were very good. But that they didn’t make it to the Super Bowl mean that their seasons were, in essence, failures.

And the three Browns teams led by quarterback Bernie Kosar in the last half of the 1980s were very good as well. But those three seasons wee, to be honest, failures as well because they didn’t result in Super Bowl berths.

It’s just that simple. It really is.

The current Browns have a lot of talent, much more so than this season’s miserable 8-9, playoff-less record would seem to indicate. General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski get high marks from people around the NFL.

So, while the pieces — both in players and leadership — seem to be in place for big things in the 2022 season and down the road, this era — and this regime — will be deemed to have been failures if the franchise doesn’t get to the Super Bowl at least once.

There’s no other way to look at it.

I don’t care how they do it, who — the players — they do it with, or, if it comes to that, even the coaches. I have my favorites, but my real favorites will be the ones who do it, who get the job done.

There are no excuses — none whatsoever. Either they do it or they don’t.

I don’t want rhetoric. I want wins.

Browns fans, the best fans in the world, deserve that. They certainly, absolutely deserve it. They are owed it — and then some.

I remember the 1964 season, the last one in which the Browns won an NFL title, very well. I especially recall the stunning 27-0 upset victory over the Baltimore Colts in the championship game in Cleveland.

It was two days after Christmas, Dec. 27, and my parents took me on a visit to see relatives in Bellaire, Ohio, a small city just south and across the Ohio River, from Wheeling. The trip was timed so as to deliver Christmas presents to my great aunt and great uncle, and to watch the title game at their house. Back then, all NFL games, regardless of if they were sold out or not, were blacked out in all TV markets within a 75-mile radius of the home city. Bellaire was well beyond the blackout line, and so we watched the game on Channel 9 out of Steubenville.

I can remember walking out onto the front porch of their house after the game and basking in the glow of the Browns winning the title, or as much as a nine-year-old kid can do that. It was better than a big strawberry milkshake from Dairy Queen. No one back then thought in their wildest dreams that the Browns would not win another title though the next 57 seasons.

Everybody who was in that house that day is long gone. Their Browns won championships — a lot of them. My Browns have not. There’s a reason why they called theirs The Greatest Generation. I have always felt as if my generation dropped the ball. We accepted less than the best from the Browns. But that’s unacceptable.

I will no longer do that.

And I think I speak for a lot of people regarding that.

So, then, Browns, you have to step it up — a lot, right now, this moment, this instant.

It’s Super Bowl or bust.

Are you listening? 

By Steve King

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