It was an experience that Newsome wouldn't wish on anyone. There was no escaping the story night or day. The specter of the franchise's relocation to Baltimore -- announced by team owner Art Modell on Nov. 6, 1995 -- and the anger it engendered in Cleveland loomed over everything the Browns did in the second half of that season.
The team complex was picketed by jilted and angry fans almost daily, and it became a fortress of sorts for the bewildered Browns employees, who knew little more than the fans did about what came next and how the team had wound up in this position to begin with. Delivery men refused to even drop off soda and snacks and other vending supplies at the team complex anymore, and Newsome found himself hesitant to risk a trip to the grocery store, the gas station or the post office, lest he venture into a community that was nearly blind with rage.
"Moving the Cleveland Browns was just unheard of," said Newsome -- who was the Browns director of pro personnel and is now Baltimore's vice president/general manager.
And what was it like to be the lightning rod head coach of a contending NFL team consigned to franchise purgatory at midseason, soon to lose both home and hope?
"It was terrible,'' said New England's Bill Belichick this week, in his first extensive comments on the tumultuous closing chapter of his five-year Browns coaching tenure. "To walk into that building every day and have everyone in the entire organization wondering what are we going to do?"
Belichick's role in the Browns' sad saga seems like a couple lifetimes ago, but he's still struck by the chaos and uncertainty that reigned in those early days, and just how helpless it felt to be a Cleveland Brown in November 1995.
"There's no situation I've been in, before or since, that even would remotely approach that one for negativity and affecting the overall focus of the team," Belichick said. "Not within 100 miles. It touched every single person in the building, every secretary, every ball boy. I felt badly for everyone involved."
With the Baltimore Ravens now in their 10th season, and the "new" Browns seven years into their expansion experience in Cleveland, time has dulled some of the intensity of the painful events surrounding the franchise's shocking departure for Maryland.
But not for Belichick, who you'd have to say has landed on his feet with the Patriots. The long, strange trip that was the Browns' '95 season remains vivid in his memory, and it will always hold a singular place in his coaching career when it comes to the art of weathering the storm.
The Browns were 4-4 and tied for first place when news of the team's relocation plans began seeping out. They went into a 1-7 death spiral at that point, ending the season 5-11 and finishing a game out of last place in the AFC Central. Belichick was fired over the phone by Modell on Valentine's Day 1996, a conversation that lasted maybe three minutes, and didn't surface as an NFL head coach again until 2000 in New England.
"The first few days were kind of a shock," Belichick said. "Your wheels were spinning. Everybody was kind of dizzy. But after about a week, when there was nothing coming our way in the way of support (from ownership) or even factual information about what was ahead, you felt just like a flag on a pole. You were just blowing with the wind, with no control over which direction you went."
The prevailing winds, of course, were blowing east, southeast, toward Baltimore, a city that knew first-hand about losing its storied NFL franchise virtually overnight. In retrospect, nothing about how the Browns were plucked from Cleveland in those crazy, confusing days makes any sense to Belichick, who is and will always remain something of a football traditionalist at heart.
"The situation in Cleveland, I certainly could have done a better job," Belichick said. "I made my share of mistakes. But that situation was off the charts. To take a franchise like that out of that city, which is 30 miles away from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and with what high school and college football means to people around there, that place is football. For that franchise to move at that point, it was monumentally wrong. It was just a difficult situation for everyone in that building."
"Things got out of control so fast''
Having gone 11-5 and winning a playoff game in '94, Belichick's fourth season in Cleveland, big things were expected of the Browns in '95. Peter King of Sports Illustrated -- and other pundits -- even picked them to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl that season.
The Browns started strong at 3-1, but a three-game losing streak ensued before they fought their way back to .500 at midseason and into a first-place tie with Pittsburgh with an overtime win at Cincinnati in Week 9. But on the Friday before their upcoming home game against the AFC Central rival Oilers, who were one game back at 3-5, all hell broke loose when rumors of Modell's moving plans began to surface.
As it turns out, that bit of chaos was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the uncertainty that would swirl around this venerable franchise in the ensuing months.
"By Friday night before the Houston game it was out, and by Saturday it was confirmed somehow,'' Belichick recalled. "By Saturday morning, the whole city was in a complete panic, as were the players and everybody in the organization. Everybody was calling, saying, 'What's going to happen? What do we do?'
"The only deal was whether the team was going to stay in Cleveland and play the '96 season there as a lame duck, or move to Baltimore right away. No one knew anything, and Art never really provided one ounce of support for all those people working for him, and still wearing the Browns colors.''
Belichick implored Modell to address the team and the organization, offering something in the way of a definitive timetable for the move, and who would be asked to go with the team to Baltimore. But other than a brief, cursory pep talk to the team on the Wednesday following the relocation announcement, Modell said little and clarified even less. Modell at that point left the city for his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., making quick trips to Baltimore as well, and never again that year returned to Cleveland. He barely kept in contact with the team's front office.
"In this business, we all get fired, we all change jobs, and there's a lot of uncertainty,'' said Scott Pioli, the Patriots vice president/player personnel, who was a 30-year old Browns personnel assistant in '95. "But hearing that the entire franchise was moving, trying to wrap your hands around the concept was difficult.
"Things got so out of control so fast. All hours of the day there were fans picketing outside our building. There were death threats being made to people, even beyond Art Modell. There were cop cars and constant surveillance around the building. It was just surreal. So far beyond the norm that no one knew how to deal with it.''
The public's antipathy for all things Browns-related after the news broke created a bunker-like mentality within the team complex in suburban Berea. Local sponsors withdrew their support almost unilaterally, and the atmosphere within the community grew so charged that the team couldn't even get its junk food delivered.
Recalls Michael Lombardi, who was then the Browns director of player personnel and is now the Oakland Raiders' top personnel executive: "We couldn't even get the Eagle Snack guy or the Coke guy to deliver any more. Everybody was so anti-Cleveland Browns.
"That first week, Nov. 10 was the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (on Lake Superior), and the joke was, that's what this is like. That (Gordon Lightfoot) song, when he sings, 'Fellas, it's too rough to feed you. Fellas, it's been good to know you.' We all felt like a band of brothers, actually. That we were able to survive it at all. We all have a bond among us after going through that together. Because we all knew that some of us were going to Baltimore, and some of us weren't. We knew some of us were going to take the blame for losing.''
Adds Belichick: "It was a total withdraw by the city, and the sponsors and all that. And under the circumstances, you couldn't really blame them. They weren't going to support us at that point. We were leaving them.''
Modell: "I have no second thoughts''
Reached this week at home in Maryland, Modell recalled his discomfort at taking the podium in Baltimore that fateful Monday to announce the move, three days after the first news reports surfaced.
"It didn't sit well with me, having to get up there and do that that day,'' said Modell, who gave up his majority ownership in the Baltimore Ravens in early '04, as part of his sale of the team to Steve Bisciotti. "I didn't like it. I didn't want it. But if I didn't move that damn team, I would have been in bankruptcy in 60 days.
"I was uncomfortable, I knew I was going to be vilified. But I was doing it out of pure economic need. I have no second thoughts, and nobody around me has second thoughts. The Browns survived as a football team. Their history and colors survived and they got a new stadium out of it. I knew I would take heat and I was prepared to take it. It was unpleasant. but I knew what I was doing was the right thing, and I still believe I did the right thing.''
Modell's critics have long contended that he was only in such dire economic straits because of years of questionable decision-making when it came to both his and the team's finances. Losing money as an NFL owner in the age of revenue-sharing, the critics contend, is a difficult task.
Asked if had any regrets about the Browns' '95 season being the casualty of his franchise re-location, Modell scoffed.
"They knew what was going on,'' he said of the team's front office and coaching staff. "They had a job to do and they didn't get it done. I can't buy into that. I had to do it sooner than later. I knew the squeeze was on. I would have loved to sell the team and keep it there, but who was I going to sell it to in that situation, with that stadium? Who was going to step up and buy the team under those conditions?''
(Modell's desire to replace the 64-year-old Cleveland Stadium put him at odds with city lawmakers, who reportedly balked at providing the Browns' owner public funds to help build the team a new home.)
Modell said the ensuing decade since his controversial departure from Cleveland has flown by. "Ten years go by in a hurry when you're having fun,'' he quipped. "This is the kind of story where it depends on who gets to tell the history, and what side it's coming from. I will say this, I won a Super Bowl (in Baltimore) within (five) years. That should tell you something.''
Modell even saved one last zinger for Sports Illustrated and its infamous Nov. '95 cover featuring a caricature of him sucker-punching Browns fans.
"I'll never get over that,'' he said. "Never. That was brutal. A brutal cover. Unkind and untrue. It wasn't a case of making a buck, it was a case of survival. They're on my big list.''
The '95 Browns were a breeding groundCheck out the landscape of the NFL today and it speaks volumes to see how many members of the '95 Browns -- a doomed team if there ever was one -- continue to dot the league map (see chart below). The coaches and front office staff of that Browns team comprise virtually a Who's Who of the NFL a decade later. Even a handful of players, such as Vinny Testaverde, Keenan McCardell, Matt Stover and Orlando Brown, remain in uniform.
Belichick, of course, has compiled Hall of Fame coaching credentials by winning three of the past four Super Bowls in New England. Newsome, Cleveland's director of pro personnel, won a Super Bowl himself five years ago in Baltimore, where he remains the team's general manager and vice president. Browns director of player personnel Michael Lombardi is now the Oakland Raiders' top personnel executive, and Cleveland's front office also included future general managers or personnel executives in Phil Savage (Cleveland), Scott Pioli (New England), Mike Tannebaum (New York Jets), and George Kokinis (Baltimore).
If possible, Cleveland's coaching and scouting staff in '95 was perhaps even more star-laden, containing six current NFL coordinators -- Chuck Bresnahan (Cincinnati), Eric Mangini (New England), Jim Bates (Green Bay), Jim Schwartz (Tennessee), Mike Sheppard (New Orleans), Rick Venturi (New Orleans) -- and two future collegiate head coaches in Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) and Pat Hill (Fresno State). Browns special teams coach Scott O'Brien is now the coordinator of football operations/assistant to the head coach in Miami, under Nick Saban -- who, of course, was Belichick's defensive coordinator in Cleveland from 1991-94.
"I think we all knew we had something good together,'' Lombardi said. "The program that Bill had built in Cleveland was an outstanding program, and it was going to be a success. We all knew it. Everybody knew it coming to work every day. I think there's just one person who didn't know it.''
Always loath to publicly sing his own praises, Belichick nonetheless acknowledges the satisfaction of seeing the Browns' '95 front office and coaching staff ascend to positions of power throughout the league.
"Obviously I'm really proud of that and proud of what we accomplished there,'' he said. "We had a damn good football team in Cleveland in '94. I told Art several times, you've got a good staff here, coaching and scouting. That's not the problem. I feel like the point has been proven 10 years later.''
Newsome, the Hall of Fame Browns tight end who was one of many Cleveland officials to make the move with Modell to Baltimore, lauds Belichick for assembling such a talented array of football men.
"We were all there together during that time,'' Newsome said. "The majority of us came in there young and eager to learn. Bill exposed us and challenged our ability to learn and understand the game of football, and I think we all did.''
An ending befitting the Browns' saga
After their season already had swirled down the drain with six consecutive losses, the Browns beat Cincinnati 26-10 in their penultimate game, the last one ever played in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. The outcome, however, is not the memory that lingers.
"I remember the final home game, it was surreal day,'' Pioli said. "The city's anger had peaked that day. And during the fourth quarter, they actually had to stop the game every time a team was driving toward the one end zone nearest the 'Dawg Pound', where the stands were so close to the field. The refs were making the two teams turn around once they got close to the Pound, because fans were heaving bleacher seats from the Pound and from the upper deck.
"I remember hearing this cracking noise, this sound, this unnatural sound for a football game. And it was people in the upper deck actually ripping up the wood and the metal from these seats and throwing them out on the field. You'd hear a cheer every time another one would go over the rail.''
Belichick said he has watched the game film from that day, and it's jarring to see the teams changing directions so often, in essence playing on a 50-yard field.
"We changed directions four times in that game,'' he said. "To stay away from the Pound. And I'll never forget seeing those seats, and they were like four seats together, and must have weighed 70 or 80 pounds, watching as they would get pitched over the upper deck. There were guys who actually brought their tools to the game and were literally taking the stadium apart. It was bizarre.''
Even Testaverde, the Browns starting quarterback for most of that season, found time to grab a few souvenirs of that lost year in Cleveland.
"The best part about it was when the Modells left town, David, Art's son, also left town prior to the whole team moving,'' Testaverde said this week. "Up in David's office, he used to keep all these cigars -- he was a cigar aficionado. I'd go up there every couple days and take a few. At the end of the year, I had me a couple cases of cigars. He wasn't around to stop me.''
For Belichick and the rest of the Browns, the ugliness of that last home game summarized their entire lame-duck experience in Cleveland. The season's final two months was a slow, steady depressing descent.
"Art had no concept of how bad it was there during those two months, because he was gone,'' Belichick said. "I didn't feel bad for myself, because I knew I'd get another job somewhere else in the league. But it was hard for my family. And it was for all those people in the organization, the people who had worked there for years and who bled Cleveland Browns for him. They didn't deserve being flat out dumped.''
1995 Cleveland Browns Then and Now
Name
Browns Title
Current Job
Bill Belichick
Head coach
Patriots head coach
Ozzie Newsome
Director Pro Personnel
Ravens V.P./General Manager
Michael Lombardi
Director Player Personnel
Raiders Personnel Exec.
Scott Pioli
Personnel assistant
Patriots V.P., Player Personnel
Phil Savage
National scout
Browns Sr. V.P./G.M.
Mike Tannebaum
Player Personnel asst.
Jets Sr. V.P./Asst. G.M.
George Kokinis
Pro Personnel assistant
Ravens Director Pro Personnel
Eric Mangini
Coaches assistant
Patriots Defensive Coordinator
Jim Schwartz
College/Pro scout
Titans Defensive Coordinator
Jim Bates
Secondary coach
Packers Defensive Coordinator
Chuck Bresnahan
Linebackers coach
Bengals Defensive Coordinator
Rick Venturi
Defensive Coordinator
Saints Defensive Coordinator
Mike Sheppard
Receivers coach
Saints Offensive Coordinator
Scott O'Brien
Special teams coach
Dolphins Cord. Football Operations
Kirk Ferentz
Offensive line coach
University of Iowa head coach
Pat Hill
Tight ends
Fresno State head coach
Pepper Johnson
Linebacker
Patriots Defensive Line coach
V. Testaverde
Quarterback
Jets quarterback
Matt Stover
Kicker
Ravens kicker
Keenan McCardell
Receiver
Chargers receiver
Orlando Brown
Offensive tackle
Ravens tackle
Tom Tupa
Punter
Redskins punter (on IR)
No comments:
Post a Comment