The Mount Rushmore of Browns middle linebackers – Ex-Browns linebackers a big hit

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth in a series of stories about the Mount Rushmore-worthy players – the best players – in Browns history. Today we look at inside/middle linebackers.

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By STEVE KING

OK, time for a quick question time:

Which former Browns inside/middle linebacker hit harder, the late, great Eddie “the Assassin” Johnson, or his one-time (for three seasons) teammate, Dick “Bam Bam” Ambrose, now a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge?

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Hmmm. I’m not sure.

Let’s just call it a tie and say that both of them hit like a sledgehammer. They made their opponents’ teeth rattle.

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And both of them came into the NFL through the back door but were determined enough and tough enough to be able to carve out a significant niche for themselves in team history.

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Ambrose was a 12th-round selection, at No. 290 overall, in the 1975 NFL Draft out of Virginia. There were 17 rounds in the draft then, so he was much closer to the end of the selection process than he was to the beginning. Yet he played for the Browns for nine years, through 1983, being a starter throughout, first at middle linebacker and then at inside linebacker when the club transitioned from the 4-3 alignment to the 3-4 in that Kardiac Kids season of 1980.

Johnson, was a skinny (6-foot-1, 220-pounder, at least in theory) young guy from Louisville drafted in the seventh round, at No. 187 overall, out of Louisville. There were 12 rounds back then, so he, too, was kind of an after-thought. Actually, not “kind of,” for he definitely was an after-thought. Even though the Browns kept trying to replace him every year, he lasted 10 seasons (through 1990) and was a starter at inside linebacker for five of them. When Bill Belichick finally cut him at the end of training camp in 1991 in his first season as Browns head coach, Johnson tearfully – and publicly — said goodbye to teammates and media members who had tears themselves.

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Johnson and Ambrose are both on the Mount Rushmore of Browns inside/middle linebackers, but who should join them in the other two spots?

How about one of Johnson’s ex-teammates, Mike Johnson (1986-93), and Vince Costello, a product of tiny Magnolia (now Sandy Valley) High School, just south of Canton, and Ohio University.

Here’s a little about those two men:

MIKE JOHNSON

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A Virginia Tech product, he was taken in the first round of the 1984 NFL Supplemental Draft, being another key player the Browns plucked from the USFL. He became a starter at inside linebacker alongside Eddie Johnson, in his second season of 1987 and remained there throughout the rest of his eight-year career before leaving through free agency for the Detroit Lions following the 1993 season. He was back at middle linebacker for the last three of those seasons after Belichick re-instituted a 4-3 defense. He hit hard, too, making a lot of tackles and always seeming to be around the ball.

VINCE COSTELLO

Costello, a native of Dellroy, Ohio, played six-man football and also starred in baseball and basketball at Magnolia High, even spending some time in the minor-league system of the Cincinnati Reds.

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The Browns signed him in 1956 and he went to training camp with them. He was plagued with injuries and didn’t make the team, but head coach Paul Brown told him to come back the following season and he’d have a spot for him. Costello did, and Brown made him the starter right from the start of his rookie year. He remained there through 1966, being a mainstay in the middle of a defense that, because of all the great players on offense, never got its due.

But the defense did have a shining moment that caught everyone’s attention. It came in the 27-0 upset of the Baltimore Colts in the 1964 NFL Championship Game. Costello, who was all over the field making plays, maintained for the rest of his life (he died in 2019) that it was not an upset because the Browns were the better team.

We can’t close an article about the Mount Rushmore of Browns inside/middle linebackers without telling a great story concerning one of its members.

Ambrose was presiding over the grisly Anthony Sowell murder trial in Cleveland in 2011 when a middle-aged woman took the stand to testify. She looked at Ambrose and asked if she could address him.

“Your honor, do you mind if I call you Judge Bam Bam?” she said.

The courtroom went silent and, for possibly the only time in that horrific trial, people started to smile, including Ambrose.

“Yes, you may do so,” he said after thinking about it for a few moments.

That just goes to show the lasting impact of those popular Kardiac Kids teams.

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NEXT: Outside linebackers.

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