“The Browns, Belichick, and the Strange Turn of Time”
Here are some one-liners — a series of one-sentence questions — on the Browns:
If 33 years ago someone had said that the young first-time head coach with the Browns, Bill Belichick, would someday be considered arguably the greatest pro coach of all-time, what would you have thought?
What you have said if that person way back when had added that in 2025, Belichick, a 73-year-old sporting a 24-year-old girlfriend, would be at North Carolina as a first-time college head coach, with his former Cleveland front-office staffer, Mike Lombardi, as the team’s general manager?
Would you have ever believed in the 1990s that a college team would someday have a general manager, and what in the world does a GM at that level do?
Would you have ever believed that the quiet, unassuming offensive line coach on those long-ago Browns teams, Kirk Ferentz, would enter the 2025 season at Iowa as the longest-tenured Division I college head coach and would be on the verge of becoming the Big Ten’s all-time winningest coach, ahead of even Woody Hayes, who has the record now, and Barberton native Bo Schembechler?
Would you have ever believed that former Browns tight end Ozzie Newsome, who went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was back working with the team as the pro personnel director, would someday be as reknowned in Baltimore as he is in Cleveland?
Would you have thought it possible that Jim Schwartz, a low-level scout then, would someday return to the club as a top-flight defensive coordinator?
Would you have ever believed that the Browns would someday have an all-brown helmet as part of an alternative uniform scheme?
And would you have ever thought that the first team in college football history to have two former Browns head coaches working together on the same staff would be North Carolina, of all places, with Belichick and Freddie Kitchens, who serves as offensive coordinator for the Tar Heels?
Steve King
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