Not Your Father’s Browns…But Closer Than You Think?

I love asking fans how they came to root for their favorite teams. Geography often plays a part. Growing up in Northeast Ohio my family bled Orange and Black on Friday nights (for Green High School football), Scarlet and Gray on Saturday afternoons (no explanation necessary) and Orange and Brown on Sundays. We would also go to the occasional Indians game at the old stadium, and a Cavs game or two at the Richfield Coliseum. That question even appears on our commenter interview questionnaire (which we haven’t done in a while sadly…)

If you ask when Cleveland won its last major championship, most fans respond rather quickly- 1964, the Browns last NFL Championship. A whole lot of us weren’t even alive then. We don’t really feel ownership of that team. My father did. He was 18 when that team beat the Colts 27-0. His fierce loyalty to the Browns made rooting for them not really an option if you know what I mean.

I started thinking about this when I borrowed a book from the library a couple weeks ago called Browns Town 1964. The author is none other than Terry Pluto. I wanted to know more about the team that made my dad fall in love with the Orange and Brown. The book delivered, and I started to realize that there are quite a few similarities between the ’64 squad and the current Browns team. Now hear me out, I’m not insisting that the Browns are going to win the Super Bowl this year, or that Jamal Lewis is going to be the next Jim Brown. But think about these things for a moment-

• Frank Ryan was given the starting QB job, even though many felt back-up Jim Ninowski should get the job because Ryan was prone to throwing interceptions.
• The offense had a great running game with Brown and Leroy Kelly, but featured a pair of great receivers as well in Gary Collins and rookie Paul Warfield.
• The offensive line was perhaps the strength of the team. Jim Brown would say of his line, “That’s what made our line so great. These guys would throw a block at the line of scrimmage, then they’d get up, run 10 or 20 yards down the field, and nail someone else. It was common for Hickerson and Schafrath to throw three blocks on one play.”
• The defensive line struggled the year before, and so a trade brought in DT Dick Modzelewski from the Giants to help solidify the line.
• Perhaps the biggest question mark on the team was the secondary, where 2nd year pro Larry Benz would man the left corner position. Benz had started every game his rookie year and recorded 7 interceptions. The other corner spot was given to journeyman Walter Beach who had spent a year in the CFL and with Boston of the AFL before getting a shot with the Browns in ’64.
• Blanton Collier was the coach with something to prove, and Paul Brown’s shadow to escape.

Sound like any team you know? With training camp more than a week away and WFNY readers hungry for football stories, we asked Terry Pluto if we could give you a few excerpts from Browns Town. He graciously agreed. Today excerpts from chapter 5, the start of training camp…

Chapter 5

When Paul Brown went shopping for a training site, he thought of one thing: isolation.

He thought of trees.

He thought of a small college in a town that wasn’t even a dot on the map.

He thought the only light at night should come from the moon.

When Paul Brown heard about Hiram College, he heard about huge oaks, rolling hills, a campus with only one outdoor phone booth that was forty rural miles from Cleveland.

Then someone told Brown, “The town is dry.”

No bars. Heck, no restaurants—just one store with a small snack bar. The closest place to buy a beer was ten miles away in a small town called Garrettsville.

So it was to Hiram that Paul Brown took the Browns every summer, and it was in Hiram that they assembled under Blanton Collier to start the 1964 season.

Like his mentor, Collier loved Hiram. He relished its serenity. He knew this was a place where players would be forced to pay attention to football; they had just each other and their thoughts. Long before “getting away from it all” and “learning about yourself” reduced this experience to meaningless psychobabble, the Browns were almost using Hiram as a retreat.

“In Hiram, there was one gas station,” Jim Brown said. “We slept in these little beds in tiny rooms that were the girls’ dorms. There was this big hill down from the dorms to the practice field. I remember trudging up that hill after practice. You’d go through two workouts a day, then walk up that hill—it felt like Mount Everest.”

Jim Brown saw tremendous signs of unity in that 1964 training camp.

He watched Bernie Parrish holding special film sessions for defensive backs. He saw John Wooten and Dick Schafrath leading the offensive linemen on long runs and short sprints, watching those elephants nearly drown in their own sweat. He knew that it would pay off; he knew that if he broke through the line of scrimmage, as he headed downfield Gene Hickerson or Wooten would be out there in front, knocking some defensive back into oblivion.

“That’s what made our line so great,” Brown recalled. “These guys would throw a block at the line of scrimmage, then they’d get up, run 10 or 20 yards down the field, and nail someone else. It was common for Hickerson and Schafrath to throw three blocks on one play.”

Schafrath came up with an idea called “the healing towel.” It was a towel he brought into the huddle, a towel soaked in ice water.

“As the game went on, it got pretty grungy,” he said. “We’d suck on it to get the water. We’d use it to wipe off the sweat. We’d use it to stop bleeding, to get mud out of our eyes. That was why it was the healing towel; we could use it for almost anything.”

The Browns’ offensive line seemed never to rest under that unrelenting July sun in Hiram. Assistant coach Fritz Heisler would scream, “Don’t stop. Don’t look back. You’ll turn into a pillar of salt.”

They invented a play called “Mash to It.”

“It meant we’d give the ball to Jim,” Schafrath said. “Then we’d just mash the guy right in front of us. No strategy. Just block the hell out of the closest guy and let Jimmy run the ball. The defense really couldn’t prepare for it, because it was so simple it confused them.”

When the Browns were only a few yards from the end zone, this became one of their favorite plays.

Quarterback Frank Ryan would sometimes ask key players for input in the huddle. The receivers favored a pass play. The backs wanted to run. Then Schafrath or Wooten or Jim Brown would scream, “The hell with it, just Mash to It.”

And they did.

This was exactly the spirit that Collier wanted. He’d give the players the structure, he’d work on their individual skills, he’d get them in shape, he’d prepare them for the plays the opposition would employ. But in the end, it came down to the players. They had to make key decisions. They had to knock the other guys on their butts. They had to believe in the system and themselves.

The best way to do that was to let the players feel they were creating that system, that their voices were heard.

In 1963, Collier saw some of that happen—but some players acted as if they had been released from prison. While some were still convinced they were weighed down by the strategic ball-and-chain that was Paul Brown’s philosophy, others took advantage of Collier’s light hand, pushing freedom a bit too far.

By 1964, they were learning what it took to be champions, and to play for Blanton Collier. And the groundwork for this championship season was being laid down at Hiram.

Collier made a couple of shrewd moves to bolster his roster.

When it came time to make their top pick in 1964, everyone wanted Paul Warfield. Interestingly, Paul Brown was the first to suggest that the Browns keep an eye on the running back from Ohio State.

For his $82,500 each year, Paul Brown was still listed as vice president, but all he did was turn in a few scouting reports. Having coached at Ohio State, he still had tremendous connections in Columbus. He knew that Warfield was not only an amazing athlete, but also a disciplined person, a Paul Brown kind of player. Brown filed this report right before he sold his home in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights and moved to La Jolla, California, outside of San Diego. The move was understandable; it had to be gut-wrenching for Paul Brown to be in Cleveland and no longer coaching the Browns, especially when the Browns were the talk of the town.

After Warfield, the other significant draft pick in 1964 was Leroy Kelly, who was picked in the eighth round from Morgan State.

“I had never been to Cleveland before,” Kelly said. “Playing at a small school like Morgan State, you don’t even know if the NFL notices you. I didn’t even know if I’d play pro football.”

Kelly flew from Baltimore to Cleveland. This was before rookies were wined, dined, and led by the nose to their destinations by NFL teams. In the 1960s, the assumption was that these were college men, and college men should be able to travel from Point A to Point B by themselves.

Kelly did just fine going from Baltimore to Cleveland. But then he had to catch a bus in Cleveland to Hiram.

That was trouble.

Kelly watched the steel mills and stores out the window turn into chickens and cows. The gray skies of the inner city were now country blue. He was going to Hiram, wherever Hiram was—and few people on the bus were sure. No one else was headed there. Even the driver wasn’t sure where Kelly should get off. So the driver and Kelly guessed—and guessed wrong.

They overshot Hiram by a couple of stops. Kelly had to sit in a gas station in the middle of nowhere for three hours waiting for the bus coming in the opposite direction.

This time, he walked off the bus at the one gas station in Hiram. He grabbed his bags and walked down that huge hill to the football field and the gym. There he saw Blanton Collier.

“Well, Leroy, it’s almost five o’clock,” said Collier, looking at his watch. “If nothing else, you made it in time for supper.”

Welcome to the Browns for this scared young man who later would replace Jim Brown and find his way to Canton and the Football Hall of Fame.

Collier also signed a free agent from San Jose State named Walter Roberts. He was called “The Flea.” He was listed at 5¢10² and 170 pounds.

No one believed it.

The Flea earned his nickname because he was small and fast, especially on kickoff and punt returns. He was spotted by a Browns scout named Sarge McKenzie, an old Army buddy of Paul Brown’s who lived on the West Coast. Sarge didn’t think Roberts was an inch over 5¢7² or heavier than 150, but he clocked the kid at 9.6 in the 100-yard dash. He saw him play nearly every down at San Jose State—flanker on offense, safety on defense, and deep man on the return teams. He was a Flea all right, but with the toughness of a roach.

Collier said fine, “We’ll take a look at him.”

No one even drafted Roberts. He didn’t rate a plane ticket to Cleveland, just bus fare. The Flea spent three full days and nights on a bus from San Jose to Hiram. He said he ate nothing but hamburgers for three straight days, those little White Castle burgers that cost a dollar for a dozen.

After a few practices, Collier was very glad he had taken Sarge McKenzie’s word. “That Roberts is like a fox terrier running around the legs of an elephant,” he said after watching the rookie return a few punts for long yardage, leaving bigger men facedown in the dirt as they literally fell for his fakes.

A few days later, Collier was calling Roberts “a rabbit in a wheat field.”

“Excerpted from the book Browns Town 1964 © 2003 by Terry Pluto. All rights reserved. This text may not be reproduced in any form or manner without written permission of Gray & Company, Publishers.”

For more information about the book- http://www.grayco.com/cleveland/books/28728
To Purchase the book- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1886228728/clevelandbooks
Publisher’s web site- http://www.grayco.com
Terry Pluto’s web page- http://www.terrypluto.com