To a man, the Browns players and coaches  — everybody in the entire organization, really — went into the 1980 season fully confident that the team was going to get off to a great start and just keep rolling.

There was nary a doubt in anyone’s mind.

Perhaps, though, they were too confident, so much so, in fact, that they did not do the necessary hard work to make sure that it would happen. Whatever the reason for it, the Browns’ start was an absolute unmitigated disaster.

To be sure, as good as their starts were in head coach Sam Rutigliano’s first two seasons of 1978 and ‘79, when they opened 3-0 and 4-0, respectively, their start in 1980 was that bad — and then some.

Really.

Truly.

The Browns got out of the gate with a nightmarish 0-2 mark, and looked bad doing it.

They apprared lethargic, especially on defense, in losing 34-17 to the host New England Patriots in their opener on Sept. 7.They fell behind 34-3 early in the fourth quarter as they made Steve Grogan, a decent quarterback but certainly not a great one, look like a guy who
would join the Patriots two decades later by the name of Tom Brady. He threw three touchdown passes. The Cleveland offense was able to run the ball well early with Mike Pruitt, who had 50 yards in 11 carries, but the ground game had to be abandoned because the Browns trailed by so much so quickly as the defense never really stopped the Patriots.

Browns quarterback Brian Sipe threw two touchdown passes to wide receivers Dave Logan and Keith Wright, but they came during mop-up time at the end of the game when the Patriots were just trying to run out the clock and go home.

It was embarrassing, and that was putting it mildly.

It was just the opposite eight days later, Sept. 15, in a 16-7 loss to the AFC Central rival Houston Oilers on Monday NightFootball at Cleveland Stadium. The offense couldn’t do anything after opening the scoring with Sipe’s three-yard touchdown pass to running back Calvin Hill in the second quarter. The defense allowed Oilers quarterback Ken Stabler to throw for just 187 yards, but he made plays when he had to on the way to completing 23 of 28 attempts.

By the end of the game, you could’ve heard a pin drop
in the stadium. Everybody was shocked to their core by what had happened.

If the season wasn’t already over for all intents and purposes, then it sure seemed very close to it.

Now what?

Steve King