The Greatest, Most Important and Most Unbelievable Play in Browns History
Being ardent Browns fans, you are well aware that the club made it to a league championship game, first in the All-America Football Conference and then the NFL, in each of its first 10 seasons of existence (1946-55), winning seven titles.
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It is the greatest dynasty in pro football history.
Being great fans, you are also well aware, then, that the pivotal point of that dynasty — that decade-long run of excellence never seen before, or since — came when, in 1950 in their first season in the NFL, the Browns captured the championship by defeating the Los Angeles Rams 30-28 at Cleveland Stadium on Lou Groza’s 16 yard field goal with 29 seconds left. For if they had not won the title — just getting to the championship game wasn’t going to be good enough — then all of their doubters, those who were convinced that they were only “paper” champions, kings of nothing by virtue of competing in a “Mickey Mouse league,” and that they would get their due, and then some, when they went to the bigger league and the so-called better competition, would have been proven 100 percent correct.
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As such, then, you are well aware that the integrity and legacies of everyone in the Browns organization, from owner Mickey McBride to head coach Paul Brown to stars such as Otto Graham, Lou Groza and Dante Lavelli to the last players on the roster, were on the line, hanging in the balance. They just couldn’t afford to fail. Figuring that the AAFC and NFL, which had been at war on a variety of fronts, would someday soon find peace and that there would be a merger of the two and they would end up in the NFL, they had secretly practiced for this golden opportunity for two years. It was all or nothing. It was their everything.
However, what you might not know is that before the Browns got to this seminal moment, there was an even bigger and more seminal moment they had to navigate. For if they had come up short in that effort, then the game against the Rams would have never happened, and the history of the Browns, as we know today, would be totally different, and less eye-catching.
We’re talking about the special American (later Eastern) Conference playoff game between the Browns and New York Giants, who had tied for first place with 10-2 records. The winner advanced to play the National (later Western) Conference champion Rams.
Now, here is something that I know you’re not aware of, because it has never been addressed on this website, or anywhere else, for that matter: the game, played almost exactly 75 years ago, on Dec. 17, 1950, at Cleveland Stadium, boiled down to one and only one play that has never gotten its due and, as mentioned, has also never really been brought to light, ever. Until now. After all those years.
The Browns — a Brown, more specifically — made that play, which is the greatest, most important and most unbelievable play in team history.
The play defied logic. It made no sense. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It just happened, as if it fell out of the sky.
It appeared to be, by all accounts, an optical illusion. Think about that for a moment: those early Browns teams, despite all their greatness, despite Paul Brown’s meticulous planning and next-level coaching and despite all they had done to that point of time, roughly halfway through their incredible run, needed an optical illusion to mark their place in pro football history.
We’ll explain next time, and I think you’re going to be shocked. I know I was, and still am.
And, most importantly, the man who pulled it off remained shocked until the day he died.
Steve King
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