“The Quiet Architect: Jim Shofner and the Making of Brian Sipe”
Former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano gets the bulk of the credit for turning quarterback Brian Sipe, who had been average, at best, in his first four seasons on the roster, into one of the greatest quarterbacks in team history.
And that’s understandable, and appropriate, to a great degree, because upon being hired in late December 1977, not long after the regular season ended, Rutigliano immediately bonded with Sipe and named him the starter. Boosted with confidence after all that, Sipe played a whole lot better in that first season of 1978, did even better in ‘79 and then soared in ‘80, breaking nearly every club single-season passing record en route to being the first Brown to earn the NFL Most Valuable Player award in 15 years. Nobody from the team has won it since. His performance is the reason why Cleveland went 11-5 and claimed its first AFC Central championship in nine years.
What a turnaround! What a season!
But the person who hardly ever gets credit for Sipe’s rise to prominence was his quarterbacks coach from
1978-80, Jim Shofner, a quiet, reserved, unassuming man who was in the quarterback’s ear all the time. When Sipe came to the sideline for whatever reason, the guy he looked for was Shofner, who mentored him
and refined him. They could finish each other’s sentences. Shofner was to Sipe what Gary Danielson was to Bernie Kosar for the last half of the 1980s.
How important was Shofner? So much so that when he left following the 1980 season to return to his native Texas to become offensive coordinator of the division rival Houston Oilers, Sipe regressed over the next two years before finally righting himself some in 1983 in his last season in Cleveland before bolting to owner Donald Trump’s United States Football League team, the New Jersey Generals.
Sipe’s offensive coordinator there was Chris Palmer, the first Browns head coach in the expansion era. Palmer knew quarterbacks, and offense, but, particularly as it pertained to Brian Sipe, he was no Jim Shofner.
Steve King
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