FOUR KEY PLAYS, FOUR KEY PLAYERS — PART 1

The Browns’ magical Kardiac Kids season of 1980 would not have happened without four plays.

Let’s begin to take a look at those plays, and the four men who made them, with this, the first of a three-part series:

A WINK AND A NOD

The Browns led a poor Green Bay team 10-0 at halftime on Oct. 19 at Cleveland Stadium and looked to be in decent shape. But that was the fake gold of that season in that there were no sure things. No lead was too big to squander and no deficit was too big to overcome. And indeed, the Packers rallied to go in front 14-13 after three quarters and increased it to 21-13 in the fourth quarter.

The stunned Browns were in real trouble. They needed two scores since this was the time before the advent of the two-point conversion rule. But would they come from? The offense had done next to nothing for 2-1/2 quarters. The Browns started the season 0-2 and were just 3-3 entering the game. With the two-time defending Super Bowl champion — and arch-rival — Pittsburgh Steelers coming to town the following week, they could ill afford a loss or else they would be on the verge of falling out of contention at the halfway point of the season.

The Browns cut it to 21-20 on quarterback Brian Sipe’s 19-yard touchdown pass to tight end Ozzie Newsome. But there was still work to be done, and the Browns got the ball back for one last shot at finishing the comeback. They moved to the Green Bay 46 as the clock wound down. Sipe came to the line of scrimmage, looking first to the right, then to the left and finally back to the right, at Dave Logan. The athletic 6-foot-4 wide receiver, who possesed great leaping ability and long arms and had starred in basketball at Colorado, was lined up in single coverage against 5-11 cornerback Estus Hood, with no safety help over the top. Immediately revognizing the size mismatch, and the tremendous opportunity, Sipe made a slight nod to Logan, as if to say, “I’m changing the play. I’m lobbing the ball to you. Go up over him and get it and then run like crazy toward the end zone. You’ll be all by yourself.”

That’s exactly what happened. Sipe alley-ooped the ball to Logan, who snatched it out of the air with his sure hands as Hood fell to the ground. He then had a clear path to paydirt, completing the 46-yard catch-and-run for the winning touchdown with 19 seconds left. On the sideline afterward, a smiling Sipe stared right into a camera and winked. That said it all about the special nature of that season 45 years ago.

In a book about that season on the 30th anniversary of it, in 2010, every Cleveland player and coach questioned agreed that the 26-21 victory, improving the record to 4-3, was the turning point, both saving the season and jump-starting it. The Browns, building on the emotion of that big victory, won 28-27 a week later, beating Pittsburgh for the first time in eight tries dating back to 1976. Those games were part of a streak in which the Browns won five straight and eight of nine on the way to finishing 11-5 and capturing their first AFC Central championship in nine years.

NEXT: GREAT SCOTT.

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