The NFL is still reeling from the death last Saturday of Minnesota Vikings rookie cornerback Khyree Jackson.

A fourth-round pick of the Vikings in the 2024 NFL Draft out of Oregon, Jackson, 24, and two of his high school teammates were killed in a car accident back home in Maryland. He was with the club for only 2 1/2 months.

The story is similar to, but not nearly as tragic as, what happened to the Browns, 61 years ago. In the offseason between 1962 and 1963, the Browns lost three young players in a span of only five months. It still ranks as the most tragic offseason by any club in NFL history.

It all started on Jan. 18, 1963 when Tom Bloom, a two-way back from Purdue who had been latter of two sixth-round draft picks of the Browns in 1963, was killed in a car accident on an icy stretch of Interstate 70 near Dayton when he and two others were returning to Purdue from a visit back home to Weirton, W. Va. He never got to meet his new coaches and teammates with the Browns.

Then, exactly five months later to the day, on May 17, 1963, running back Ernie Davis died of leukemia. He was 23. 

Davis, who broke all of Jim Brown‘s rushing records at Syracuse en route to becoming the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy as a senior,!had been drafted No. 1 overall in 1962 by Washington, but the team, then known as the Redskins, traded the rights to Davis to Cleveland for running back Bobby Mitchell. While Mitchell went on to a Pro Football Hall of Fame career after being converted to wide receiver in Washington, Davis never played a down for the Browns. Paul Brown made the deal because he wanted to have two big backs in the backfield, Davis and Jim Brown, jujust like the Green Bay Packers had with Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung. Mitchell, who had been Brown’s running mate from 1958-61, was a smaller player than either Brown or Davis, being more of a scatback. Years later, Jim Brown told me that he thought it was a bad trade in that getting Davis would’ve allowed opponents to focus on only one type of running back, making it easier for them in their preparation, since he and Davis were about the same size. With Mitchell, Brown contended, the fact he was so much different from himself gave opponents two entirely different styles to worry about, making it more difficult for them.

The terrible offseason for the Browns ended just 17 days later, on June 4, 1963, when Browns starting safety Don Fleming was electrocuted in a construction accident in Winter Haven, Fla. (where the then Indians held spring training for many years) when the boom he was operating struck a powerline.

Fleming, exactly a week shy of his 26th birthday, was from Shadyside, Ohio, just a 45-minute ride down Ohio 7 from Weirton. He had been drafted by the Chicago Cardinals in the 28th round in 1959 out of Florida, but did not want to play for them because they were perennial losers. His former Florida teammate, Browns cornerback Bernie Parish, approached head coach Paul Brown, told him of the situation and implored  him to make a trade for Fleming. Brown did and was happy he did so, as Fleming became one of the rising young defensive backfield stars in the NFL.

Fleming’s 46, and the 45 that was assigned to Davis, are among the five numbers retired by the Browns.

Steve King