There are Pro Football Hall of Famers among the Pro Football Hall of Famers in Browns history.

That is, there are some who have stood out among those who stood out.

There’s running back Jim Brown, the greatest player of all-time at any position.

There’s Otto Graham, who, with it being the quarterback’s main job to win games, may well be the greatest quarterback ever since he is certainly the winningest player at his position in history.

There’s kicker/left tackle Lou Groza, who is HOF-worthy at two positions. He could be called “The Father of Modern Kicking” for the importance he brought to that skill with his prowess. Others think so, too, because college football’s top kicker each year receives the Lou Groza Award.

There’s Ozzie Newsome, for the way he revolutionized his position and changed the sport greatly, especially the passing game, by being the first tight end who was really a wide receiver in being able to run downfield and make plays. As such, he was a matchup nightmare in being too big for safeties to cover and too fast for linebackers to handle.

And finally, there’s middle guard Bill Willis and fullback Marion Motley, who were the first two players to permanently break the color barrier coming out of World War II by playing for the Browns in 1946.

But Willis has another trait that made him special. It was his speed.

Yes, he played on the defensive line – over the center, specifically, at what would now be the middle linebacker position – back in the days of five-man fronts, but while he had good size for the time at 6-foot-2 and 213 pounds, he didn’t run like a lumbering lineman. Rather, the athletic product of Columbus East High School and Ohio State ran like a running back.

And he proved it in a very emphatic and important way on this date 65 years ago today, on Dec. 17, 1950, at Cleveland Stadium.

Willis turned in the play of the game by making a touchdown-saving tackle in the fourth quarter, helping lead the Browns to an 8-3 win over the New York Giants in an American Conference playoff contest that propelled them into the NFL Championship Game.

Played on a brutally cold day before 33,054 fans, the game was necessitated after the teams finished the regular season tied for first place with 10-2 records in the American, which shortly thereafter was renamed the Eastern Conference.

The Browns, in their first year in the NFL after coming out of the All-America Football Conference, suffered both of their losses against the Giants, falling 6-0 at Cleveland in Week 3 and then 17-13 at the Polo Grounds three weeks later. The Browns had plowed through the rest of their opponents like a hot knife through butter.

Now they had to figure out how to solve a rugged New York defense if they wanted to stay alive in the postseason and have a shot at winning the NFL title.

The Browns, who along with the Giants wore tennis shoes to improve their footing on the icy field, got an 11-yard field goal from Groza in the first quarter and that 3-0 lead held up through three quarters. That set up a wild finish.

The Giants tied it 3-3 with a field goal of their own early in the fourth quarter, then threatened to go ahead minutes later when they drove to the Cleveland 36. Running back Gene Roberts broke free on a run around and appeared headed to the end zone. He was nicknamed “Choo-Choo” for a reason. He was one of the fastest players in the NFL. When he got out in the open, he was usually gone, being able to out-run everybody as he chugged on down the tracks and into paydirt.

But none of that deterred Willis. He knew he was fast, too, so he shifted it into high gear and took off after Choo-Choo. The problem was that Roberts had a big head start.

A lineman chasing one of the NFL’s speedsters? That was not a fair competition. Absolutely, it wasn’t. In what then appeared to be an optical illusion, and what remains one of the greatest plays in Browns history, Willis chased Roberts down from behind at the 4. It was a 32-yard gain, but it was not a touchdown.

From there, the Cleveland defense stiffened and the Giants came away with no points, keeping the score tied 3-3.

Groza booted a 28-yard field goal with 58 seconds remaining to put the Browns in front 6-3, and then in the final moments, Willis put an exclamation point – or two or three or four — behind his already tremendous performance by tackling Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly in the end zone for a safety to seal the deal.

In the locker room afterward, Willis was asked how was able to catch the speedy Roberts, who finished as the game’s top rusher with 76 yards in 12 carries.

“I didn’t see a man running with the football,” Willis said. “I saw a man running off with a bag of money – my money.”

Willis was referring to the extra payout the Browns players would get from making it to the league title game.

I had the honor and privilege of doing a long interview with Willis, a true gentleman if there ever was one, about a year before he died in 2007.

I asked him the same question that had been posed to him so many years before: “How in the world did you catch up with Choo-Choo?”

Willis leaned back in his stool and, with a wide smile coming over his face, laughed heartily.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Maybe only God knows.

The great Graham and Conerly, one of the top quarterbacks in the league, combined to complete just 6 of 20 passes for 91 yards and three interceptions.

Graham, though, rushed for 70 yards in eight carries. Motley, the NFL’s leading rusher that year with 810 yards and a 5.8 yards-per-carry average, was held to just 12 yards in seven tries.

Indeed, this wasn’t a day for the offense. It was, instead, one for the defense.

Especially one for the best – and fastest – defensive player on the field, Bill Willis.