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What is your favorite Cleveland Browns game all time? Ten reasons this might be the one
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- What is your favorite Cleveland Browns game all time? Ten reasons this might be the one
Here's a rainy-day football question whose answer depends on when you began to understand football.
What is your favorite Cleveland Browns game of all time?
If you are under 30, perhaps it was a playoff game at Pittsburgh in January 2021.
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If you are over 80, maybe it was the 1950 NFL Championship Game, capping the Browns' first year in the league with a last-second Lou Groza field goal that reversed a 28-27 Los Angeles Rams lead.
If you are, say, 55, your favorite surely isn't the 1986-87 AFC Championship Game − The Drive − but it might be the victory that got them there.
On Jan. 3, 1987, a lakefront mob sipped a tall glass of tension through the better part of three hours. It was anybody's game.
But suddenly it looked unwinnable. Thousands headed for the exits.
The comeback to a 23-20, double-overtime win is a fantastic story, called to mind as Joe Klecko heads to Ohio as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2023.
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The fray was full of people who, at the time, seemed good enough to make the Hall of Fame.
Allow us to introduce them:
New York Jets soared before Joe Klecko had to sit
Klecko was a beast of a heavyweight boxer in college. He was a force into his 30s on the Jets defensive line.
Broadway Joe Namath's 1968 Jets won 11 regular-season games en route to making Super Bowl history. Lunch Bucket Joe Klecko led the 1985 Jets to 11 wins for the first time since '68 — the regular-season finale was a 37-10 beatdown of the Browns.
The Jets seemed ready to make playoff noise in 1986 when they streaked to a 10-1 start. Near the end of the run a knee injury took down Klecko.
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He played a bit down the stretch, but it was no good. He couldn't answer the bell at Cleveland.
"Wow, that hurt us," Gastineau told us recently. "It hurt us bad."
"Joe was muscles on top of muscles," defensive tackle Marty Lyons said in another recent interview. "His hands were so strong. If he got them on you, you were dead.
"It was the New York Jets, but it was Joe Klecko's team. We went as far as we did because of the way Joe played."
Marty Schottenheimer was Bill Cowher's boss in Cleveland
Marty Schottenheimer was 41, in his fifth season as Browns defensive coordinator, when he replaced fired head coach Sam Rutigliano with the Browns at 1-7 midway through the 1984 season.
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His 1986 Browns hit the playoffs on an 11-2 hot streak. That led to a first-round bye while the Jets were beating a Chiefs team quarterbacked by Todd Blackledge.
Schottenheimer was never nervous. Even after Mark Moseley's maddening miss of a 23-yard field goal in overtime delayed the win over the Jets, he barely grimaced before putting back on his Marty face.
He lasted for decades, just not in Cleveland. He ranks seventh all-time with 200 regular-season wins. A 5-13 postseason record keeps him out of the Hall of Fame.
Schottenheimer and Bill Cowher grew up near Pittsburgh. Both kept NFL playing jobs by spitting special teams fire.
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Schottenheimer coached Cowher in Cleveland for a few years and in 1985 hired him to coach his special teams.
Gerald "Ice Cube" McNeil was Cowher's 142-pound flash.
In a regular-season win at Pittsburgh, "Cube" broke a 100-yard kickoff return. Against the Jets, he had a 35-yard punt return called back by a bogus clipping call against Felix Wright.
Eventually, a McNeil return led to the field goal that sent it to overtime.
Cowher got to the Hall of Fame as a Pittsburgh head coach. He won 51 fewer regular-season games than Schottenheimer, but his postseason record was 12-9.
Art Modell fired Schottenheimer less than two years after the Jets game, replacing him with Jets defensive coordinator Bud Carson.
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Bill Cowher says he learned from Clay Matthews
Defensive players Klecko, Chuck Howley and Ken Riley made the Hall of Fame's Class of 2023 as "seniors" candidates.
Browns fans wanted Clay Matthews to get one of those spots.
Cowher was a 29-year-old coach. Matthews was a 30-year old outside linebacker.
"I learned a lot from Clay," Cowher said in Canton in 2021. "That guy without a doubt should be in the Hall of Fame."
Klecko was an NFL rookie in 1977. In 1986, he was near the end of a career that wound up spanning 155 games.
Matthews arrived in Cleveland in 1978 and, in 1986, was just midway through a 278-game career.
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Matthews was tremendous against the Jets. He made an early 12-yard sack of Pat Ryan. On assorted key plays, he hemmed in backs and receivers on a day the Jets punted 14 times.
He was the glue of a defense that made nine sacks, three by Carl "Big Daddy" Hairston.
On special teams, Cowher trusted Matthews to hurry punter Dave Jennings without risking a roughing call. The hidden stat of the day: Jennings averaged a meager 32.6 yards on 14 punts.
Jets back Freeman McNeil gave Browns grief before overtime
The Jets drafted Freeman McNeil third overall in 1981, one spot after the Giants took Lawrence Taylor.
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McNeil led the NFL in rushing yards in 1982 and, for quite a while, produced like a Hall of Famer. In 1985, he ran for 1,331 yards (4.5 average) in 14 games. Dallas superstar Tony Dorsett ran 1,307 yards (4.3) in 16 games.
McNeil's playoff resume included outbursts of 202 yards against Cincinnati and 135 yards against Kansas City.
Browns vs. Jets was scoreless when he sucked in the defense by going around the left side. He threw back across the field to Pat Ryan, who fired a 42-yard touchdown pass to wide-open Wesley Walker.
With less than five minutes left in regulation, on the first play after Bernie Kosar threw an interception, McNeil ran 25 yards for a touchdown that put the Browns in a 20-10 hole.
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Browns linebacker Chip Banks rivaled Lawrence Taylor
The year after McNeil was a No. 3 draft pick, the Browns drafted 6-foot-4 linebacker Chip Banks third overall.
After making NFL defensive rookie of the year in '82, Banks didn't make NFL defensive player of the year in 1983, but he got more votes than veteran stars Jack Lambert and Gastineau.
Banks helped USC beat No. 1 Ohio State 17-16 in a Rose Bowl. He never warmed up to Ohio. He was some fans' third favorite linebacker after Matthews and Eddie Johnson.
Johnson made a fierce head-first hit and left the Jets game with an injury. Banks sacked Pat Ryan on the next play.
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"That was the first time the Jets didn't have a tight end in Banks' face," NBC analyst Bob Trumpy said. "Probably the last time."
Later, Trumpy said, "Chip Banks certainly rates with Lawrence Taylor among the best of the outside linebackers."
It was the moody Banks' next-to-last game with the Browns.
Art Modell was a long-time Browns owner by 1986
Owner Art Modell's 26th season unfolded 17 years after the Browns' last playoff win. On that cold January day, he sat outside not quite with the masses, but in seats in front of his loge.
Beating New York signaled a warming trend. From 1986-89, the Browns' regular-season record was 41-21-1. They won three division titles and three playoff games.
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Three losses to Denver in AFC championship games were a bummer, but the bright side of those days is blinding compared to the expansion era.
These years later, the closest Cleveland came to a Super Bowl was a week after the Jets game, when they seized a late 20-13 lead and then, on a kickoff, buried Denver at the 2.
The stadium atmosphere for the Jets and Broncos games was so magnificent that it remains incomprehensible how Modell ever got away with moving the team.
Joe Klecko and Mark Gastineau reached 20 sacks the same year
Sacks become an official NFL stat in 1982.
They seemed real enough to Jets teammates Joe Klecko and Mark Gastineau in 1981.
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Unofficially Klecko and Gastineau had 20.5 and 20 sacks for 1981. Almost officially, Gastineau had the most hated sack dance in football history.
Officially, he led the league with 19 sacks in 1983 and 22 in 1984, then added 13.5 in 1985.
On Jan. 3, 1987, at 30, amid groin, abdominal and knee injuries, it hurt to watch him move. But he played.
He sacked Bernie Kosar twice to help New York build a 20-10 lead.
It looked hopeless when Kosar threw incomplete to set up third-and-25 with 3:30 left in regulation.
After the ball was out, Gastineau took two steps and plowed through Kosar's blind side. Blitzing safety Harry Hamilton hit Kosar late from the other side. Gastineau was flagged for roughing.
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"It was the worst day of my life," Gastineau says now. "It's the worst memory I've had in my life."
The Browns still were in bad shape. But instead of third-and-doomed, it was first down.
Bernie Kosar set NFL postseason passing records
Kosar's magic began to leak in 1990, well before he might have made a Hall of Fame push.
He reached the playoffs in each of his first five seasons, 1985-89. His outing against the Jets, at 23, was a baby step toward Canton.
At the end of regulation, during which he threw 54 times, NBC's Don Criqui said, "Kosar's arm is gonna fall off."
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The arm stayed in socket.
He passed for 489 yards, an NFL postseason record, surpassed in 37 subsequent postseasons only by Tom Brady, with 505 yards against the Eagles in 2018, and Ben Roethlisberger, with 501 yards against the Browns in 2021.
"Kosar can sling it," Criqui told the USA. "He's a star in his second season."
"Bernie just carved us up," Marty Lyons says now.
Gangly Bernie spent Saturday rolling out, scrambling and improvising. His late interception on a short throw into triple coverage in the end zone almost ruined everything.
A few boos arose after he soon threw another pick with the Browns trailing 13-10, soon to be 20-10 when Freeman McNeil scored on the next play.
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He got hot after the Gastineau penalty. Big back Kevin Mack began to bruise a Klecko-less interior.Mack scored with 1:57 left in regulation. The defense made a stop.
With 24 seconds left, Webster Slaughter went out of bounds at the 5 after catching a Kosar bomb. Fans and players went wild, seeming to forget the Jets still led 20-17.
"They're going to congratulate themselves right out of this game," Trumpy said.
Moseley, a straight-on kicking dinosaur replacing injured Matt Bahr, sent it to overtime with a short field goal.
The Jets offense was out of gas. Kosar finished strong.
Moseley's unforced 23-yard miss in the first overtime inspired zero confidence he would make a 27-yarder in the second. But he did for the 23-20 win.
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Afterward, Cleveland sang "Bernie Bernie" to the tune of "Louie Louie." Schottenheimer chortled, "We all had an opportunity to experience one of the finest games in the history of this sport."
Jets' Al Toon gave Browns' Minnifield-Dixon duo trouble
Al Toon was a high draft pick out of Wisconsin in 1985. He carried his sleek 6-4 frame with a beautiful stride.
During the Jets' nine-game win streak in '86, he delivered a nine-catch, 195-yard game at Seattle.
Toon was a tall order for cornerbacks Hanford Dixon, an All-Pro that year, and Frank Minnifield, who with Lester Hayes made the NFL's all-decade team for the 1980s.
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In the NBC studio, pregame, Ahmad Rashad called Toon "the best receiver in the NFL." Another second-year pro, Jerry Rice, gave the 49ers 1,570 receiving yards that year.
Toon ran by Minniefield for an early 28-yard completion. He wound up with five catches for 95 yards, and it could have been worse.
Late in the third quarter, he beat Dixon badly for a likely touchdown, but Ken O'Brien overthrew him.
Why Browns fans called Ozzie Newsome 'The Wizard'
Ozzie Newsome's two best games in a Hall of Fame career arguably were against the Jets.
In the 1984 regular season against New York, he caught 14 passes for 191 yards. In the 1987 playoff game, he amassed 114 yards, by far the biggest of his 10 playoff games.
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Newsome captained the 1977 Alabama team that beat Ohio State 35-6 in the Sugar Bowl. Jets mainstay Marty Lyons had been his Crimson Tide teammate.
"I love Ozzie," Lyons said these years later. "He's one of the best individuals I've ever met."
Many Browns fans of a certain age count Browns vs. Jets as the most fun they ever had.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Browns Jets overtime playoff game all time Cleveland fan favorite
