Saturday is the 38th anniversary of the day — and the event — that got the Browns to where they are now, at yet another low ebb as they continue to struggle during the expansion era.
That period began in 1999.
That’s 25 years.
That’s 2-1/2 decades.
That’s a — gulp! — quarter-century.
An entire generation — and then some.
That’s a long, long time.
A long, long time spent picking the wrong general managers.
The wrong head coaches.
The wrong quarterbacks.
The wrong players at other positions.
The wrong support staff.
It wasn’t always that way, however, because the original Browns, through the 50 years of that franchise’s existence from 1946-95, did a lot of great things, the most impressive of which was winning eight league championships.
It seemed as if they might be destined to capture league title No. 10 when Bernie Kosar threw a 48-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Brian Brennan, who pivoted after catching the ball and turned strong safety Dennis Smith into Mr. Pretzel before sprinting the last 15 yards into the end zone, with just under five minutes left in the fourth quarter to give the Browns a 20-13 lead over the Denver Broncos in the 1986 AFC Championship game played 38 years ago, on Jan. 11, 1987, at a loud, raucous and filled-to-capacity (79,915) Cleveland Stadium.
The late, great Ed Meyer, the Browns beat writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, in the prediction part of his fact box for the game, included, “Is there anyone in Northeast Ohio who doesn’t believe the Browns will beat Denver?”
Not just Northeast Ohioans, but everybody else in the country, believed the Browns would win following that touchdown pass.
Then returner Gene Lang mishandled the ensuing kickoff and finally just had to fall on the ball at the Denver 2, meaning the Broncos had to drive 98 yards for a touchdown — into the teeth of the Dawg Pound, no less — just to tie the score. At that moment, it was not just people in this country, but those in the entire free world, who believed the Browns would win.
Indeed, it seemed as if the stars were all aligned in just the right way, and the window of opportunity had been flung open, for the Browns to triumph and get to the Super Bowl for the first time.
There was absolutely no doubt. It was a fait accompli.
But, as we all know, it unfortunately did not play out that way. The Browns turned victory into defeat by letting a young quarterback by the name of
John Elway drive the Broncos all that way for a touchdown, coming on his pass to wide receiver Mark Jackson, to force overtime and then marched them into position for Rich Karlis to kick the game-winning field goal as Denver stunned the Browns, 23-20.
To add to the humbling nature of it all, Karlis hails from Salem, Ohio, about 18 miles southwest of Youngstown. The Browns had been thwarted by one of their own.
“When I made the kick, I immediately felt great joy because we were headed to the Super Bowl,” Karlis said, “and then in the next instant, my heart sank because I realized that I had broken the hearts of everybody back in my hometown.”
That still is as close as the Browns have ever gotten to the Super Bowl. It was so close that they could almost touch it.
They came back in the 1987 season to try again, only to lose in agonizing fashion once more to Denver on the doorstep of the Super Bowl.
Kosar blew out his throwing elbow in the 1988 opener, and that set off a chain reaction of injuries to their starting quarterbacks all season. They somehow still made the playoffs, but lost in the first round.
With frustration building over the inability to get to the Super Bowl, the Browns fired head coach Marty Schottenheimer at the end of the 1988 season and brought in a defensive specialist, Bud Carson, to see if he could devise a way to stop Elway and open the door to get to the Super Bowl. It didn’t work, either, as the Browns made it to the AFC title game yet again but still lost to the Broncos.
It was the football version of the movie, “Groundhog Day.”
The 1990 season resulted in a 3-13 finish, with Carson getting fired and the Browns eventually hiring another defensive-minded guy as head coach in Bill Belichick. But Belichick became Public Enemy No. 1 halfway through 1993 when he unceremoniously cut the hugely-popular Kosar with the team in first place in the AFC Central, derailing the season.
Belichick was Art Modell’s man, so the owner was villified as well at that monent. That, along with the angst left over from not getting to the Super Bowl with those great teams in the last half of the 1980s, created a strong negative public sentiment toward Modell and the Browns that caused him to look elsewhere — Baltimore — for the stadium deal he so badly wanted, and needed, while the city, county and state political leaders took their old, sweet time doing anything about it.
The Browns shockingly relocated there after the 1996 season, but the fans successfully fought the NFL to keep the Browns name, colors and history for a replacement expansion team to take the field in 1999 in a new stadium built on the footprint of the former one.
But none of the good vibes from the original franchise, and stadium, carried over to the expansion era, and it has been one mistake after the other, with new Browns never being able to get it right for any great length of time.
It is now 2025, and the Browns are still coming up empty.
But it would be different — oh, so much different — if the Browns had beaten the Broncos in that 1986 AFC title game 38 years ago — a game that was right in their clutches, there to be had. It would have sent the Browns to the Super Bowl and gotten that monkey off their backs, and in doing so, it would’ve erased all the frustration that kept building up with the Browns’ failure to make it to the Super Bowl.
As such, then, the positive vibe around the Browns would have allowed Modell to get that new stadium and Baltimore would have pilfered somebody else’s team. The original Browns would still be in Cleveland.
So, that battle for the 1986 AFC title is the game that changed everything, right up to the present time — all in a negative, ugly way.
Steve King
