There are times when nothing can be something – really something, in fact.
For the Browns, the 1951 season was one of those times.
The Browns recorded four shutouts that year, which is the official team record since it occurred in NFL play. It was done one other time, in the franchise’s first season of 1946 in the All-America Football Conference.
It was on this date 64 years ago, on Oct. 21, 1951, when the Browns, in their second year in the NFL, recorded one of those four shutouts in a 17-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers before 32,409 at Cleveland Stadium.
The Browns had beaten the Washington Redskins by a much more resounding score of 45-0 the previous week, also at Cleveland. It’s one of just two times in club history that the Browns have recorded consecutive shutouts. The other was 32 years later, in 1983, against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (20-0) and New England Patriots (30-0).
In the rematch with Pittsburgh in the next-to-last game of the 1951 season at Forbes Field, the Browns won 28-0. That marks the only time in NFL play – and just the second time ever – that the Browns have shut out the same team twice in a season. The other was again in 1946, when the Browns clobbered the Miami Seahawks 44-0 in their first-ever game and then did it again, 34-0, in the next-to-last contest of the season.
In the 17-0 win over Pittsburgh, neither of the Browns’ two touchdowns came from their offense. They led 10-0 at halftime on Horace Gillom’s 38-yard fumble return for a touchdown and Lou Groza’s 25-yard field goal.
Gillom, a Cleveland Browns Legend as the greatest punter in team history, grabbed one of his kicks that touched a Pittsburgh player and took off. The Massillon High School product was used to running with the ball as one of the Browns’ first tight ends before the position was called that.
The Browns’ other TD came in the third quarter on cornerback Warren Lahr’s 27-yard interception return. It was one of the five interceptions Lahr had that year, tying safety Cliff Lewis, a Lakewood, Ohio native, for the team lead. It was also one of the two times in 1951 that Lahr returned a pick for a TD.
The Cleveland defense forced five turnovers in all that day.
The Browns, who won their third straight after an opening-season loss to the San Francisco 49ers to put their record at 3-1, got a huge performance from a little-known player, fullback Emerson Cole, one of just a handful of African Americans in pro football at the time. A product of Swanton High School neat Toledo and the University of Toledo, he rushed for 126 yards in 17 tries after gaining just 105 yards all year as a rookie in 1950. Cole ended 1951 with 252 yards rushing.
Dub Jones, who would tie an NFL record five weeks later by scoring six touchdowns in a game, added 52 yards in 11 carries.
Cleveland’s top two wide receivers, Mac Speedie and Hudson High School and Ohio State product Dante Lavelli, each caught three passes for 27 yards.
Four weeks later, the Browns recorded their third shutout of the year by defeating the arch rival New York Giants 10-0.
And three weeks after that, they completed their season series shutout sweep of the Steelers (say that three times fast). Now that, in itself, was really something.
