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Sam Rutigliano was a great communicator who talked excitedly, in parables, with great stories and with much humor.

His quips were legendary.

Indeed, especially in the months after being hired and leading up to the start of that first season of 1978, there was a lot to like, and to be attracted to, by this salesman of a Browns head coach. It was just plenty of fun.

But talk will go only so far. There need to be results — positive ones — to go with it. Nothing would fuel that enthusiasm more than a quick start.

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Rutigliano had to deliver, and he did.

The season opener against the San Francisco 49ers — on Sept. 3, the day before Labor Day, at Cleveland Stadium in beautiful late-summer weather — could not have gone better. The Browns excelled in every aspect of the game en route to rolling to a 24-7 win.

Yes, the 49ers were not very good, as would be evidenced by having to change head coaches halfway through the season en route to finishing a dismal 2-14 in the last season before the head coach right down the road at Stanford, some guy named Bill Walsh, arrived and turned them completely around. But it was more than what San Francisco did or didn’t do. Rather, it was what the Browns did, and how they looked doing it. They appeared to be going at one speed, with the 49ers going at another, much slower pace. At no point in the game did the Browns seem to be in danger of even being challenged, let alone of losing.

The Browns scored first, getting Greg Pruitt’s two-yard touchdown run in the opening quarter.

After the 49ers tied it 7-7 in the second quarter, the Browns went ahead 14-7 at halftime on a 33-yard TD run on a end-around by Ozzie Newsome, the fast, athletic tight end — the tight end of the future —the Browns selected out of Alabama with the No. 23 overall pick in the NFL Draft four months earlier.

It stayed that way until the fourth quarter when quarterback Brian Sipe, starting his second straight opener, threw a 68-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Reggie Rucker. Don Cockroft then kicked a 23-yard field goal to put an exclamation point everything that had happened.

Sipe hit on 12 of 25 attempts for 190 yards and the TD with no interceptions. In what would become one of his greatest strengths, he completed passes to six different players. He also had a 35-yard scramble. Rucker had three catches for 113 yards. Pruitt added three receptions for 25 yards, including a 22-yarder, and gained 106 yards on 22 rushes as the Browns rambled for 213 yards on the ground.

The Browns forced a whopping six turnovers, including three interceptions, two by cornerback Oliver Davis and the other by safety — and Sandusky High School product — Thom Darden, who returned it 42 yards. Darden, the club’s all-time interceptions leader with 45, topped the NFL in 1978 in both picks with 10 and return yards (200).

For the 49ers, O.J. Simpson, in his first game with the team after spending his first nine seasons with the Buffalo Bills, rushed for 78 yards while Greg Boykin, from Kent Roosevelt High School, added 52.

Browns fans really liked what they saw throughout the afternoon, and wanted more.

Steve King

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