The Drive still ‘Dawgs' Browns

Hanford Dixon talked on his cell phone as he drove around the Cleveland area on business the other day.

As the conversation continued, it seemed at some point soon that the former Browns Pro Bowl cornerback, a member of the team’s prestigious Browns Legends Club, would clip a mail box, plow into the rear end of someone stopped at a traffic light or simply drive off the road and into a ditch.

For the subject being discussed was that old bugaboo, the 1986 AFC Championship Game, or The Drive, as it’s more commonly known today.

"I don’t appreciate you bringing it up," Dixon joked. "And the fact it’s on TV all the time around this time of year doesn’t make it any easier, either."

Yes, The Drive will get more a lot of face time these next several weeks.

"I don’t watch it. I can’t watch it," Dixon said of the Browns’ 23-20 loss in overtime.

It’s just too painful.

"It was just a blow," he said. "It took a while to get over. You keep replaying the game in your mind, wondering, ‘What if?’ When I think about it even now, I get so upset that I just want to go kick something."

Red Right 88, the play described in Part 1 of this series, struck out of the blue, like a lightning bolt on an otherwise clear day. But The Drive was just the opposite. There was nothing sudden about it in any way, shape or form. It was a slow, miserable experience – like a Chinese water torture. Each drop – each play of that drive – hurts a little more when it’s viewed now, 18 years later.

The old saying that time heals all wounds doesn’t apply here. It only seems to fester, and when The Drive is shown again and again and again, like a nightmare that just won’t quit, it’s like pouring salt into the wounds.

The whole container of salt. Maybe even the entire salt mine.

"I know it’s been a long time since it was played, but that game still hurts. It really does," Dixon said.

To realize just how much it hurts Dixon and the rest of the Browns who played in that game, you have to turn the clock back to calendar year 1987 – to be exact, Jan. 11, the day the game was played before a full house of 79,915 at old Cleveland Stadium.

Dixon wasn’t a businessman then, as he is now. He was the Top Dawg and he, along with fellow Pro Bowl Frank Minnifield, embodied the spirit of the Browns – and of Cleveland - at that time.

The team was made up of characters who had character – players who had ability on the field and off it. They were players with whom Browns fans easily identified. They loved playing here.
Some of them, such as Boardman native Bernie Kosar, Clevelander Bob Golic and Canton’s Ray Ellis, were even from here, so it made their stake in all this just that much greater. It was more personal. They were playing for their boyhood friend who still lived in the old neighborhood, their uncle who weaned them on stories of Otto Graham, Bill Willis and Lou Groza when they were growing up, and the elderly man down the street whose grass they used to mow when they were kids.

They didn’t need a road map to get around town. They knew these roads like the back of their hand.

And the players who didn’t grow up here made you think they did by the way they adopted the community as their own.

As such, the Browns players had a wonderful relationship with the fans. They played for the fans, and they played up to them as well.

When the team began winning, following up an 8-8 season in 1985 by going 12-4, capturing eight of their last nine regular-season games and gaining home-field advantage throughout the conference playoffs, it only manifested the situation.

The high point heading into that game against the Broncos was what had happened the previous week. The Browns, down by 10 to the New York Jets with two minutes to go in the fourth quarter in the divisional playoffs at Cleveland, put on one of the greatest comebacks in team history to win, 23-20, in double-overtime.

Ask the modern Browns fan for his most memorable game, and he’ll pick that one. Hands down.

It wasn’t just a football game. It was a statement by a team and a city that was yearning to make one. The Browns, like Cleveland in general at that point, had been knocked down, but they were fighting back. Everybody loves an underdog, and they really love one in Cleveland.

The time between the triumph over the Jets and the game against Denver was a week-long party. People sang songs – "Bernie, Bernie" played to the tune of "Louie, Louie" – toasted each other and the Browns, and generally made merry as they awaited the visit by the Broncos.

The Browns were going to win and, at long last, make it to the Super Bowl. It was a sense that everyone had.

"Is there anyone in Northeast Ohio who doesn’t believe the Browns will win?" Ed Meyer, then the Browns beat writer from the Akron Beacon Journal, wrote in explaining his reason for predicting a Cleveland victory.

But the feeling wasn’t confined just to this region. It was also reverberating nationally.

"This is the Browns’ time," Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula, a former Browns player, Painesville native and John Carroll University product, said while working as an analyst on NBC’s pre-game show. "The stars are all aligned in the right way. Everything seems to be in the Browns’ favor."

Maybe so, but the game was anything but easy. The Broncos matched the Browns point for point. It wasn’t until Brian Brennan turned Denver safety Dennis Smith into a pretzel as he turned him one way and then another in catching a 48-yard touchdown pass from Kosar with 5:43 left in the fourth quarter, that either team had any real breathing room. That put the Browns up, 20-13.

The fans’ wishes were coming true. The Browns were going to the Super Bowl, and Brennan was going to be the hero. The highlight that would be shown over and over and over again from that game – even years later – would be of Brennan, holding the ball behind him and looking back at a helpless Smith, who had been faked flat onto the ground, as he skirted into the end zone. In the background could be seen Browns fans jumping up and down with unbridled joy.

This was 1964 all over again.

Even the players, who obviously have to guard against being over-confident and, as they say, counting their chickens before they’re hatched, thought at that point that the Browns were going to win. That feeling became much greater – from both the players and the fans – when the Broncos botched the kickoff return and they had to fall on the ball at their own 2 just to keep possession.

"There’s no doubt we thought we had them," Dixon said. "Who would have ever thought they’d drive down the field 98 yards on our defense? We had Pro Bowl cornerbacks (Dixon and Minnifield). We had good linebackers. And the guys up front with the pass rush gave everything they had."

But even with all that going for them, and even though they were in their own stadium with the crowd going wild and rooting them on, the Browns still couldn’t stop the Broncos. Denver went 98 yards in15 plays in 5:44 for the tying touchdown, the scoring coming on third-and-one from the Cleveland 5 when Elway rifled the ball to wide receiver Mark Jackson on a quick slant with 37 seconds left.

"We were really never concerned at any point on that drive, because the thought in the back of our minds all along was that they had to score a touchdown," Dixon said. "They couldn’t settle for a field goal. They had to score a touchdown, and we felt that sooner or later, we’d stop them."
That never happened, though, of course. But it came close to happening.

The key play occurred after nose tackle Dave Puzzuoli sacked Elway for an eight-yard loss, setting up a third-and-18 situation from the Cleveland 48 with 1:47 left. It looked like the Broncos were done.

As Elway was standing in shotgun formation waiting for the snap, running back Steve Sewell went in motion. A miscommunication problem caused center Billy Bryan to snap the ball to Elway at about the same time Sewell was crossing behind Elway. The ball grazed Sewell in the leg and hit the ground, but instead of it beginning to bounce crazily, as one would expect with the well-worn grass surface at the old stadium, the ball came right up to Elway. It was an artificial surface-like hop.

"There were so many things like that, just crazy stuff that happened – stuff that normally doesn’t happen," Dixon said.

Also, on the scoring pass, the ball seemed to go directly between the raised arms of Browns tackle Carl Hairston as he rushed Elway. The quarterback’s pass seemed to be a field-goal attempt that split the uprights of Hairston’s arms.

There was extensive criticism of Browns coach Marty Schottenheimer, the team’s former defensive coordinator, for allegedly going into a prevent scheme on the final drive. The Browns had held Elway and the Broncos to just 13 points for well over 3½ quarters playing their base 3-4 alignment.

But Dixon won’t even comment on such criticism.

"Don’t put the blame for what happened on anyone but us: the players," Dixon said. "If we had executed the way we were supposed to, we would have stopped them. But we didn’t. We didn’t make it happen. So blame the players."

The Browns won the toss to start the overtime and got the ball first, but went three-and-out.

The Broncos took over at their own 25 following Jeff Gossett’s ensuing punt and moved 60 yards in four plays to set up for the game-winning 33-yard field goal of Rich Karlis, a native of Salem in Columbiana County, who had grown up rooting for the Browns.

Even that was not without controversy, however. The ball soared off Karlis’ foot, so much so, in fact, it went high above the height of the uprights. A photo of the kick in Sports Illustrated, looking at it from Karlis’ back as he drove the ball at the closed end of the stadium, shows that the ball was dangerously close to being wide left. To this day, many – mostly from Cleveland – believe the kick was no good.

"I’m one of those people. I don’t think it was good," Dixon said. "I mean, we’re at home, so I think we should get that call."

But they didn’t. So instead of the Browns going to the Super Bowl, it was the Broncos.

"The thing that really hurt was for Denver to play like they did against us and then for them to just lay an egg in the Super Bowl (losing 39-20 to the New York Giants)," Dixon said. "We were a more physical team than Denver, and I think we would have matched up better against the Giants, especially defensively, than they did. There’s no doubt in my mind that if we had beaten Denver, we would have gone on to beat the Giants and been Super Bowl champions."

Then Dixon laughed. It was that kind of "Oh, man" laugh, the one that’s used to shield disappointment.

"It just wasn’t meant to be," he said. "No matter what we did, Denver was destined to win that ballgame. The good Lord upstairs just did not want us to make it that year, I guess."

Then he added, "You know, though, that was our own opportunity to get where this team has never been before – to the Super Bowl. These current Browns are going to have to get to a Super Bowl soon so that people will stop asking me about that game."

For what it’s worth – not much, in the eyes of Browns fans – here’s the painful play-by-play recap of The Drive:
Denver ball (5:32 left in fourth quarter). Cleveland 20, Denver 13.
1-10-Denver 2 – Sammy Winder 5 pass from John Elway (tackled by Hanford Dixon).
2-5-Denver 7 – Winder 5 run (Reggie Camp, Mike Johnson).
Denver takes its first timeout.
3-2-Denver 10 – Winder 2 run for first down (Camp).
1-10-Denver 12 – Winder 3 run (Anthony Griggs).
2-7-Denver 15 – Elway 11 run for first down (Chip Banks).
1-10-Denver 26 – Steve Sewell 22 pass from Elway for first down (Chris Rockins).
1-10-Denver 48 – Steve Watson 12 pass from Elway for first down. (Ray Ellis, Frank Minnifield).
Two-minute warning.
1-10-Cleveland 40 (1:59) – Elway passes incomplete to Vance Johnson (Ellis in coverage).
2-10-Cleveland 40 (1:52) – Elway sacked for 8-yard loss (Dave Puzzoli).
Denver takes its second timeout.
3-18-Cleveland 48 (1:47) – Mark Jackson 20 pass from Elway for first down (Felix Wright).
1-10-Cleveland 28 (1:19) – Elway passes incomplete to Watson (Sam Clancy in coverage).
2-10-Cleveland 28 (1:10) - Sewell 14 pass from Elway for first down (Clancy).
1-10-Cleveland 14 (:57) – Elway passes incomplete to Watson (Clancy in coverage).
2-10-Cleveland 14 (:42) – Elway 9 run (Clay Matthews).
3-1-Cleveland 5 (:39) – Jackson 5 pass from Elway for touchdown.
Rich Karlis kicks extra point. Cleveland 20, Denver 20 (:37).
Drive: 15 plays, 98 yards, 4:55 consumed.