The Browns’ Fab Five quarterbacks, plus one
By STEVE KING
When it comes to Browns quarterbacks, everybody knows the Fab Five.
There’s Otto Graham, who earned his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame after leading the team to 10 straight league title games, with seven titles, in its first decade of existence. He was called “Automatic Otto” for a reason. He just kept winning.
There’s Frank Ryan, who led the Browns in 1964 to what is still their last NFL title by throwing three touchdown passes to wide receiver Gary Collins to blank the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts 27-0. Ryan was arguably the league’s best quarterback from 1963-67.
There’s Brian Sipe, the lowly 13th-round choice in the 1972 NFL Draft who became the triggerman of the 1980 Kardiac Kids, leading them to the the team’s first AFC Central crown in nine seasons en route to being the last Brown to win the NFL Most Valuable Player Award, and the first win since Jim Brown did it 15 years before. He holds most of the team’s passing records.
There’s Bernie Kosar, a Boardman Township native who got to realize his dream of playing for his hometown team, He led the Browns to five straight playoff appearances from 1985-89, winning flour Central Division titles and making it to the AFC Championship Game three times.
And finally, there’s the present guy, Baker Mayfield, with one playoff appearance — and resounding victory over the arch rival Pittsburgh Steelers — under his belt and so much more expected of him in the coming seasons. His and the team’s future seems bright.
But there’s another quarterback who, while he wasn’t with the Browns that long, just five seasons, was extremely productive.
His name was Bill Nelsen, and the 53rd anniversary of his arrival in Cleveland was just recently.
It was May 14, 1968 when the Browns made a trade with the then hapless Steelers, obtaining Nelsen and defensive back Jim Bradshaw for quarterback Dick Shiner, defensive tackle Frank Parker and a future draft choice. If it isn’t the best trade in Browns history, then it is at least on the short list thereof.
Nelsen was OK with the Steelers, which meant he was pretty good because that club had no one around him. When he got to Cleveland, where there was plenty of talent, his career took off. Ryan was beat up physically with a series of injuries and was at the end of his career. When he — and the offense and the Browns overall — struggled out of the gate in 1968, head coach Blanton Collier, who had proclaimed Ryan as his starter over Jim Nonowski when he got the job in 1963, made the tough, painful decision to bench him and make the switch to Nelsen.
It was like flipping a light switch on. After starting the season 1-2 and coming off two games in which they scored a combined total of 13 points in one-sided losses to two of the best teams in the NFL at th time in the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Rams, the Browns went 9-2 the rest of the regular season, winning eight in a row at one point, before a meaningless loss to the St, Louis Cardinals in the finale to finish 10-4, their best mark since 1965, They scored 31, 21, 30, 30, 33, 35, 45, 47, 45 and 24 points in the first 10 games.
Nelsen finished the regular season with 19 touchdown passes and just 10 interceptions, compiling an 86.4 quarterback rating. He helped lead the Browns to a 31-20 victory over Dallas in the divisional playoffs as they ended a four-game losing streak to the Cowboys dating back to 1966.
The Browns were routed 34-0 by the Baltimore Colts in the NFL title game, but Nelsen had firmly established himself as their starter.
It was more of the same the followig season, 1969, when the Browns did slightly better, going 10-3-1 to win the Century Division title for the third straight year, They routed the Cowboys 38-14 in the divisional round and then lost 27-7 to the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL Championship Game, being denied a trip to the Super Bowl for the second straight season.
But Nelsen had bad knees — worse than those of Joe Namath, in fact — and that started to take its toll. He struggled in 1970 and ’71, though the Browns won the AFC Central title in the latter season. The 1972 season began with him as the starter, but he was benched early in favor of houng Mike Phipps and he never got the job back.
Nelsen’s legacy had already been built, however. He was a great leader and one of the toughest quarterbacks the Browns have ever had, and there’s no way they would have done as well as they did in 1968 and ’69 without his having taking over.
