If the Browns had stayed in Cleveland

Watching the unending forlornness of the current Cleveland Browns, mired in a thick soup of cloying ineptness, punctuated by Sunday’s mind-numbing one-point defeat with no time left to lowly Detroit, I can’t help but wonder: What if the original Browns were still in Cleveland?

Think of it. Ray Lewis would have been a Brown, easily the best middle linebacker ever in team annals, taking his place alongside storied Brownie linebackers Clay Matthews, Chip Banks, Galen Fiss, and Walt Michaels from earlier franchise eras, Michaels a mainstay on two NFL championship teams. Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco would be a young illustrious hopeful like the legendary Otto Graham and Milt Plum and Dr. Frank Ryan and Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar had been before him—that rich Browns history made possible by the pioneering brilliance of head coach Paul Brown, one of the game’s great innovators, who brought science and study and high-level scouting to the pro game.


But maybe the best part of this dream scenario would be that if the true Browns had remained in Cleveland they would still have Ozzie Newsome. No, not Ozzie Newsome the Hall of Fame tight end/receiver; the current Browns already have him as part of the placating bone that then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue tossed Browns’ fans when the team relocated to Baltimore in 1996: an ill-conceived and unprecedented arrangement that left the team’s vibrant history in Cleveland awaiting some future expansion team while the club moved elsewhere, not to mention the dumbfounding three-year gap in the mid- to late-1990s where no team at all was in existence in the northern Ohio town. So the Browns already have Ozzie Newsome the player. But if the nefarious and egocentric Art Modell had not turned his back on Clevelanders and moved to Baltimore, Newsome would be the mastermind G.M. architect of today’s Browns, not the Ravens. That would’ve been Cleveland, with veteran Pro Bowl safety Rod Woodson, hoisting the Super Bowl XXXV trophy in Tampa, not Baltimore.


With Newsome has their G.M., the Browns would have had 11-time Pro Bowl left tackle Jonathan Ogden anchoring their offensive line for the dozen years that followed the franchise’s departure. While current Browns tackle Joe Thomas would be a welcome fit on any NFL team, imagine him teamed with the Ravens’ own spectacular rookie right tackle, Michael Oher; picture five-time Pro Bowl safety Ed Reed and the great rushing outside linebacker Terrell Suggs in orange and brown, not to mention three-time Pro Bowl cornerback Chris McAlister. Newsome brought in reconstructed pros, like the highly effective Woodson, too.

But of course, we have the scurrilous Modell to thank for the fact that all this is not happening in Cleveland today. When the onetime Browns owner’s pockets wore thin, Modell took the low road, opting for an offer from another city to salvage his miserly soul rather than simply selling the team and getting out of the game. It takes no historian to opine that Modell chose self-interest over the interests of an entire city. Today Cleveland still pays the price for his personal greed: the near-empty vessel of an expansion team still languishing in the doldrums of endless mediocrity.

Alan Ross is the author of 32 books, including Away from the Ball: The NFL’s Off-the-Field Heroes. E-mail him at:alanross_sports@yahoo.com© Sportland 2009