Monday, Aug. 31 (AM) – Now Bill Belichick is winning Super Bowls.

But nearly a quarter-century ago, he was still trying to win his first game as a head coach.

It was 24 years ago tomorrow, on Sept. 1, 1991, that Belichick made his head-coaching debut with the Browns – and at any level of play — as they opened the regular season at home against another guy in his early years as an NFL head coach, Jimmy Johnson, with the Dallas Cowboys.

Hired eight months before, Belichick took over a Cleveland team that, following a great five-year run through the last half of the 1980s, had bottomed out in 1990, finishing with what was then a franchise-worst 3-13 record, causing head coach Bud Carson to get fired halfway through the year.

Assistant coach Jim Shofner took over as interim coach, but when the season was over, he wasn’t really a serious candidate to be hired full-time. Browns owner Art Modell wanted someone to come in from the outside and rebuild his team, and he found that man in Belichick, who was just 38 when he was given the job. Belichick was defensive coordinator for the New York Giants as they won two Super Bowls in a five-year span, including in 1990 when they stunned the heavily-favored Buffalo Bills.

Belichick told Modell it would take time to get the Browns back to prominence, and the owner agreed to provide him with whatever he needed, including that time, to get the job done.

The Cowboys would provide a stern opening test. After finishing 1-15 in 1989 in Johnson’s first year as coach, they improved to 7-9 in ’90 and would go 11-5 in ’91 and make the playoffs as their trio of stars, quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith and wide receiver Michael Irvin, began to blossom. They then won the Super Bowl following the 1992 and ’93 seasons, after which Johnson stepped down because of not seeing see eye-to-eye with team owner Jerry Jones.

The Browns led 7-3 in the first quarter on a one-yard run by Kevin Mack, one of just a handful of inherited players Belichick ended up keeping. But Dallas rallied for a 20-7 halftime lead.

Coming out of the locker room, the Browns needed a big play to get back into the game. And they got it on the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter when quarterback Bernie Kosar threw a 62-yard touchdown pass to his favorite target, wide receiver Webster Slaughter, to cut the gap to 20-14.

But that was as close as the Browns could get as Dallas added a pair of fourth-quarter field goals to secure a 26-14 victory.

Disappointed but undaunted, Belichick guided his team to wins in the next two games, 20-0 at New England, which is where he now coaches, of course, and 14-13 over Cincinnati at home.

Immediately following the win over the Bengals, secured on a Matt Stover 45-yard field with just four seconds left, Belichick threw off his headset and ran down to the Dawg Pound and thanked the fans there for making a lot of noise late in the fourth quarter to disrupt the Cincinnati offense. The fans roared their delight in being acknowledged by the coach. At that moment, Belichick could have run for mayor of Cleveland and won. They loved the guy.

The Browns were in a lot of close games that season and stood 6-7 and in the playoff hunt with three contests left. But they sputtered down the stretch, not winning again to finish 6-10.

Despite the losing record, it was still a good season. The Brownsdoubled their wins total from the previous year and looked much more competent than they had in 1990.

However, it would be 1994 before Belichick had a winning season and his first and only playoff berth in his five years in Cleveland. By that time, he was Public Enemy No. 1 for having cut the popular Kosar midway through the 1993 season.

But that was Belichick. He was going to do it his way. And his way, after not working in Cleveland, has worked – tremendously so – in New England after undergoing a few fundamental changes as Belichick began to understand the importance of delegating responsibility, and also of drafting good-character players.