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 our final installment includes excerpts from chapter 6, the Browns break camp…

Collier liked how his team was coming together.

Dick Modzelewski and Jim Kanicki solidified the defensive line. Warfield and Collins gave the Browns the best receivers in the league. Jim Brown by himself composed the best backfield, and Ernie Green wasn’t just another back, as he showed when he was named to the Pro Bowl the year after Brown retired.

Quarterback was still an issue: Jim Ninowski or Frank Ryan?

As training camp opened, Bob August wrote in the Cleveland Press: “The tag on Frank Ryan was ‘not good enough.’ . . . Ryan was to be a fill-in for Ninowski, marked for emergency use only. He never would have been here if Len Dawson, the No. 2 quarterback, hadn’t balked at the bargaining table. The emergency developed when Ninowski was injured [in the middle of the 1962 season], and Ryan has been a regular ever since. . . . Before the Pro Bowl Game in January, Ryan commented that he could be another Y.A. Tittle. ‘Too bad about Ryan,’ said an office cynic. ‘He must mean that he’s losing his hair [like Tittle].’ . . . Ryan is starting his sixth season as a pro, but only his second as a regular, and the quarterback is the most important man in the team’s immediate future. . . . Ryan has made himself a success only by stubborn insistence on his ability, even when it was widely doubted.” [Read more...]

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 6, the Browns break camp…chapter 5 excerpts can be found here, and here.

Chapter 6

Trade Jim Brown?

That was what the Browns should do—or at least, that is what former Browns quarterback Otto Graham suggested the team do unless Jim Brown shaped up.

Graham stunned his former team when he appeared at a luncheon in Canton, Ohio, and told 150 fans, “If I were the Browns’ coach, I would tell the fullback that I would trade him if he didn’t block and fake. The Browns will not win anything as long as Jim Brown is there. Chew on that for a while.”

There was more.

“There is no comparison between Jim Brown and [former Browns running back] Marion Motley,” Graham said. “Motley was the greatest all-around fullback.”

And more.

“As each year goes by, I gain more respect for Paul Brown,” Graham said. “The world could use more Paul Browns.”

And even more.

“His teammates have told me that he doesn’t block or fake,” Graham added. [Read more...]

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…part 1 can be found here.

Collier’s other key addition was Dick Modzelewski, a veteran defensive tackle acquired from the New York Giants. Modzelewski had been in the middle of the Giants’ defense that had been stuffing the Browns for years. His brother, Ed, was a running back with the Browns in the 1950s. When Dick came to the Browns, he was thirty-three—too old, according to the Giants.

Collier thought Modzelewski was exactly what the Browns needed. Old or not, he had played in 138 consecutive games, the longest streak in the NFL. He was 6-foot, 250 pounds, a square of flesh on two legs.

The Browns’ other defensive tackle was Jim Kanicki, the second-year man from Michigan State. He had two nicknames. In public, [Read more...]

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. [Read more...]