It’s time to plunge deeper into NFL history than the QB Top Five series has plunged thus far.
1. Otto Graham
In primordial football, the sport played at colleges after the introduction of the forward pass in 1906 and in the nascent NFL of the 1920s, the “quarterback” was just the guy who lined up one-quarter of the way into the backfield. He sometimes, but not always, took the snap, usually before lateraling to a teammate. He sometimes, but not always, was the team captain and play caller. The “quarterback” of the 1920s was more like a modern fullback, if fullbacks can be considered “modern.”
A team’s best passer was generally the tailback or fullback. He was also often the team’s best rusher, punter and punt returner. Those last two skills were critical, as teams often punted on first or second down if they faced bad field position. Passing was generally the least important thing they did, because the football had a wider circumference, and strict rules made passing more like a gadget play or desperation strategy than anything we are used to today.
One ancient rule required forward passes to be thrown from five yards behind the line of scrimmage. A quarterback who passed often, like Red Dunn of the Packers, had to backtrack before passing. The modern “dropback” was years away, as was anything resembling a “progression of reads,” so he just stumbled back a few yards and hoped his intended target was open.
Giants fullback Bronko Nagurski threw a controversial touchdown pass to Red Grange after faking a run in 1932, and the NFL scrapped the cumbersome five-yard rule. Passers could throw from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. In 1935, the diameter of the ball was reduced, making it easier to throw. Artie Herber and Sammy Baugh became prolific passers, but both were tailbacks who shared passing duties with other backs.
George Halas brought the T-formation to the NFL late in the 1930s. Instead of trying to explain the difference between Sid Luckman and his predecessors/contemporaries, I submit this highlight reel from the 1946 NFL Championship between the Bears and the Giants:
Luckman takes snaps from under center, usually with two running backs behind him and a third in motion. The formations and tactics are recognizable.
Giants tailback Frank Filchock, on the other hand, takes deep snaps with unbalanced offensive lines in front of him. A blocking back (Steve Filipowicz, wearing number 23) can be seen lined up in a gap between center and guard on some plays; he would have been called the “quarterback” 10-15 years earlier. Filchock punts on third down and returns a kickoff in the footage above. He’s a holdover from a past era. Luckman is the harbinger of a new one.
Luckman, who we will talk about much more when we get to the Bears, may have been the first modern quarterback. Otto Graham, however, was the first modern quarterback on a modern team in a modern pro football league.
Graham starred at halfback for Northwestern in the early 1940s. He briefly served in the navy at the end of World War II. He played professional basketball, very well, in 1946. Former Ohio State coach Paul Brown approached Graham that year to serve as his quarterback for a new team in an upstart professional football league: the Cleveland Browns (named after their already-famous coach) of the AAFC.
Graham became the first quarterback to study film in a classroom setting. He was the first to defer play calling to his coach; Brown sometimes relayed the plays through a speaker in Graham’s helmet. The Browns were built for two-platoon football, an innovation required during World War II, when decreased manpower called for more frequent substitutions. Brown’s assistant coaches were full-timers with clearly-defined roles. His playbook was more advanced and nuanced than what Halas and Luckman used. Graham did not punt or kick field goals, and his defensive duties vanished as the AAFC made substitutions easier. He was a fully modern quarterback, and he was awesome.
Here are some Graham highlights. Note the passing pocket, a Paul Brown innovation. Note the obvious timing of the passing plays. Luckman, only a few years earlier, was playing something more akin to schoolyard ball.
Graham led the AAFC in pretty much everything in its four seasons. The league was, charitably, about as good as the 1980s USFL. It’s only considered a major league because of Graham and the Browns, who were added to the NFL along with the 49ers and a franchise named the Baltimore Colts which quickly went bankrupt and died.
As the tale is often told, Graham’s Browns were expected to get their come uppance at the hands of the mighty Eagles in their first NFL game. Instead, the Browns pasted the Eagles 35-10, with Graham throwing three touchdown passes. The Graham-led Browns won the 1950 NFL championship plus three others, and they would play in three additional NFL championship games. Graham led the Browns to seven championships across two leagues. The last vestiges of the old non-T formations died, as every NFL team began adopting Paul Brown’s innovations.
I have no idea where to place Graham among the all-time great quarterbacks. How can he be compared to someone like Tom Brady or John Elway? If you call him, say, the sixth or 14th best quarterback in history, what on earth is that based upon? If you relegate him to a “pioneers” category with Luckman and Baugh, it minimizes his accomplishments and contributions. He wasn’t playing some do-it-all position in a rugby-like sport. He was helping define the game we watch today.
I think of Graham as football’s Babe Ruth. He changed what his sport looked like. He created a whole new set of expectations. And if you brought him in his prime to the present in a Tardis and gave him a year with a modern conditioning coach, he’d probably be a damn fine NFL quarterback.
2. Bernie Kosar
Kosar, a superstar at the University of Miami, entered the NFL in the 1985 Supplemental Draft after a boondoggle I would only be able to do justice to with about 10,000 words and a week of dedicated research. You can get the highlights from his Wikipedia page. Long story short: the mid-1980s were a chaotic time in American football. The USFL challenged some outdated NFL and NCAA policies about who was eligible to turn pro when. If you think NIL and the transfer portal has created mayhem recently, imagine if some 1980s businessman was offering underclassmen millions of dollars to join his rival league.
The NFL did not want to lose Kosar. Kosar wanted to play for the Browns. Hijinks ensued, but everyone got what they wanted in the end. (Except the Vikings, who traded up … never mind.)
Kosar replaced injured Gary Danielson as the Browns starter in 1985 and became their full-time starter in 1986. The stage was set for Kosar to become a minor character in someone else’s heroic epic.
It’s 1986. We’re playing the Denver Broncos. The AFC Championship Game. Unfortunately, it’s The Drive game. With about four minutes to go I hit this bomb to [Brian] Brennan. He scores a touchdown; we go up by seven. And it’s much documented what’s happening with John Elway: that 98-yard drive. About halfway through that damn drive, I’m standing right next to Brian Brennan. Brennan looks up to me and he goes, ‘Damn it, they’re gonna score, and nobody’s gonna remember my great catch.” – Kosar, on The Hanford Dixon Show, 2023.
There are going to be a few tall tales in the segments to come, and Kosar loves a good yarn. If Brennan had really said something that prescient and absurd (not even “Oh no, we might lose!” but “Oh no, history will forget me!”), it probably would have come to light before 2023.
Here is what Brennan remembered thinking on the sideline during The Drive, from an AP feature in 1999: "I remember standing with Gary Danielson. There we were, two guys from Detroit, and we were going to the Super Bowl. We were hugging and I was thinking that like ‘The Catch’ Dwight Clark made for San Francisco, I had made ‘The Catch’ to put us in the Super Bowl."
Anyway, John Elway, blah blah blah. Then came 1987 and a return to the AFC Championship Game. What folks might forget about “The Fumble” is that it ruined not just the Browns’ effort to get to the Super Bowl but Kosar’s effort to answer Elway’s heroics as well.
The 98-yard drive that ended Cleveland’s Super Bowl dreams a year ago was in the back of quarterback Bernie Kosar’s mind as he tried to bring the Browns back on Sunday.
“The scenario looked a lot like that,” said Kosar, whose attempt to tie the score died when Earnest Byner fumbled the ball near Denver’s goal line with 1:05 to play, securing the Broncos’ 38-33 victory in the AFC Championship.
“I wasn’t looking at it in terms of matching that performance,” Kosar said. “I was just looking at it in terms of the scoreboard.
“But I have to be honest with you, I thought about last year’s drive because I knew we needed a touchdown at that point. There was no doubt in my mind that we had the ability to do it.” – from Chuck Melvin of the Associated Press, January 18th, 1988.
Kosar led the NFL in DVOA and DYAR in 1987. He ranked fifth in DYAR and sixth in DVOA in 1986.
I’m grateful to have Aaron Schatz’s metrics for those years. Marty Schottenheimer’s offenses, coordinated by Lindy Infante, were a little stodgy, especially compared to what teams like the Dolphins, Bengals and Washington were doing. The 1987 strike makes everyone’s statistics hard to interpret. Kosar was a gawky athlete, especially compared to Elway or the fellow I rooted for every Sunday: Randall Cunningham. I have to work to stop myself from looking back on Kosar like some jabroni who only existed to make Elway look like a hero. But Kosar was Elway’s equal, at least for two years, and he did everything a quarterback could do to get his team to the Super Bowl.
Kosar missed chunks of 1988 with arm and ankle injuries. Marty Schottenheimer gave way after that season to Bud Carson, a brilliant defensive coordinator with no gift for offense. The Browns offense went from “stodgy” to “bad.” Two years later, Carson gave way to Bill Belichick, a brilliant defensive coordinator with no gift for offense or human interaction. The Browns offense went from “bad” to “beneath the attention and dignity of the head coach.”
Belichick used a committee approach at offensive coordinator in his first three seasons with the Browns, which worked only slightly better than when he used the same tactic with the 2022 Patriots. With Kosar’s arm deteriorating, Belichick acquired hard-throwing Vinny Testaverde, Kosar’s college successor. Belichick clearly wanted to move on from Kosar. The feeling was mutual: Kosar began changing plays when he was in the lineup, and he even criticized the game plan after a loss to the Broncos.
On Nov. 8 the Browns' coach, Bill Belichick, went and did the weirdest thing of all: With Testaverde out indefinitely because of a separated shoulder, Belichick unceremoniously waived quarterback Bernie Kosar, the most revered Cleveland player since Jim Brown and a special favorite of the fans because of his Ohio roots. Kosar's departure left the Brown offense in the green hands of a fellow named Todd Philcox, heretofore known around town as the Guy with the Clipboard. To the Brown faithful, particularly those given to public displays of bone waving, the move took its place beside the Rocky Colavito-for-Harvey Kuenn trade, the Paul Brown firing and the Paul Warfield trade as one of the darkest moments in Cleveland sports history. – Ned Zeman, Sports Illustrated, November, 1993.
Teammates were stunned. Fans were outraged. Todd Philcox went 1-3 as a starter, and Testaverde was ineffective when he returned. The Browns failed to reach the playoffs, but Kosar didn’t: he signed with the Cowboys days after Belichick dumped him and won a Super Bowl ring as Troy Aikman’s backup. In fairness to Belichick, Testaverde led the Browns to the second round of the playoffs the next year.
Since Belichick cut Kosar, the Browns have never reached the AFC Championship and have won just two playoff games. I don’t know if there is any Curse of Bernie Kosar legend in Cleveland – it’s hard for such lore to take shape when Kosar spent decades as a popular local media personality – but a superstitious person could be forgiven for thinking that some bad juju still lingers from 1993.
3. Frank Ryan
Ryan attended Rice University, where he: a) platooned with King Hill, later a first-overall pick, for a few years; and b) earned a doctorate in mathematics, with a dissertation titled “A Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc.”
Ryan bounced around the Rams bench for four years before getting traded to the Browns. Jim Ninowski, another 1962 trade acquisition, was expected to replace Milt Plum (see the fifth segment). Ninowski suffered a midseason collarbone injury, however, and Ryan took over as the starter.
Longtime lieutenant Blanton Collier replaced Paul Brown in 1963. The methodical Collier clicked with Ryan, allowing him to call his own plays, something Brown never let his quarterbacks do. Ryan threw 25 touchdown passes in 1963. He led the NFL with 25 more in 1964 and, with the help of Jim Brown, Paul Warfield and others, led the Browns to their most recent championship, beating Johnny Unitas and the Colts 27-0 on a windy day in Cleveland sixty years ago.
That championship contest was scoreless at halftime, with both offenses struggling to move into the wind. Ryan began spotting weaknesses in the second half, however, calling a sweep to Brown when Colts cornerbacks were playing deep for fear of the wind and exploiting another defensive tendency. “I knew they had been playing Gary Collins for a hook pass all afternoon,” Ryan said after the game. “I decided to call a hook-and-go to Collins, and when he went he was open."
Not all of Ryan’s decisions that day were prudent. The 51-yard touchdown to Collins gave the Browns a 27-0 fourth-quarter lead. The Browns got the ball back with 26 seconds left. Fans were already storming the field. But Ryan allegedly urged referees to continue the game, then attempted a pass into the end zone.
“We’ve got a slot end named Johnny Brewer,” Ryan explained a few weeks later. “He’s a fine player, but he hasn’t gotten much acclaim. I wanted to give him the opportunity to score in the championship game, but I guess the Colts interpreted it as an attempt to belittle or embarrass them.”
“I don’t think the Colts had any reason to get upset,” Ryan added. “After all, they didn’t hold back in their 52-0 rout of the Chicago Bears earlier in the season. But no one heard the Bears complaining.”
Weeks later, Colts defender Gino Marchetti hammered Ryan in the Pro Bowl, a game which was taken rather seriously in those days. Wayne Walker, a Lions linebacker who also wrote a column for the Detroit News, claimed that the hit was retaliation for Ryan’s attempt to run up the score, and Walker’s version of the story got picked up nationally.
Walker is also the source of the bit about Ryan demanding that the referees continue the game, which sounds a little suspicious, as do Ryan’s golly, what’s the big deal? protestations before immediately dredging up the Bears rout. Whatever Ryan or Marchetti intended or Walker heard around the jukebox and saw fit to print, you gotta admit: this is juicy stuff.
Marchetti was exonerated. Ryan required shoulder surgery. He suffered other ailments in 1965, and Warfield suffered a collarbone injury in the preseason. The Browns still reached the NFL Championship, thanks largely to Jim Brown, but sources at the time said that fans began booing Ryan.
Ryan bounced back in 1966, leading the NFL with 29 touchdowns, but the Browns dipped to 9-5 due to the departure of Jim Brown and a decline on defense. Ryan was still suffering the lingering effects of his shoulder injury in 1967 when he sprained both ankles, then suffered a concussion in a collision with Dick Butkus in a victory over the Bears.
The Browns acquired veteran Bill Nelsen from the Steelers in the offseason. Collier replaced the rickety Ryan with Nelsen early in the 1968 season. Nelsen played well. Ryan played out the end of his career in Washington.
The press loved Ryan’s “Dr. Math” angle, just as they loved Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Harvard background, though there was a tinge of point and stare at the brainy weirdo in the way they covered Ryan.
“The constant emphasis on his cloud-nine mathematics and his Ph. D. and his IQ tends to characterize him as a freak, something he definitely is not,” Sports Illustrated’s Jack Olsen wrote, hundreds of words into a 1965 Ryan profile which does much to compound that very problem. “A quarterback has to have a rapport with his fellow players both off and on the field, and Ryan seems to make a constant effort to be just another one of the boys who graduated with a C minus in phys ed or mort sci.”
Ryan was unpopular late in his Browns career. He was a victim of injuries, perhaps semi-intentional ones, and of a dynasty in slow decline. Quarterbacks who win early in their careers, then linger for a while, tend to be branded as disappointments. But I cannot help but wonder if fans of the era were predisposed to think of their quarterback as some brainy interloper who didn’t fit in, even though he was a tall, drawling Texan who had a fine arm and wheels before all the injuries.
Ryan passed away in January.
4. Brian Sipe
Legend has it the Browns got their “Kardiac Kids” nickname when a Cleveland Clinic doctor showed Sipe a cardiac machine readout of a patient that died in the hospital watching on television just as the Browns beat the Jets, 25-22, in the 1979 season opener on a 27-yard field goal by co*ckroft. A 35-yard field goal by co*ckroft on the final play of regulation forced the overtime.
The moniker stuck. Thirteen of the 17 games the Browns played in 1980 were decided by seven or fewer points, and eight of those were decided by three points or fewer. The Browns were 9-3 in those games in the regular season but a painful 0-1 in the playoffs. – Jeff Schudel, the News-Herald, from a 2020 retrospective.
Sipe was a 13th-round draft pick from San Diego State in 1972 who spent two years on the Browns reserve list and two more relieving former third-overall pick Mike Phipps as he played his way out of the lineup. Sipe replaced the injured Phipps in 1976 and became the Browns starter for several unremarkable seasons.
Then came the 1979 season opener. The Jets led by three in the waning seconds. Sipe heaved a bomb to Dave Logan. Joe Klecko roughed Sipe, adding 15 yards to the end of the completion to set up a game-tying field goal. Sipe then connected with Logan again in the final moments of overtime, turning a potential tie into a 25-22 win.
"One of the physicians from the Cleveland Clinic came down to our training center in Berea," Sipe later said, per Anthony Poisal of the Browns website. "I think it was after that game, he showed us a paper readout on a cardiac machine, and it showed that somebody had died right at that moment. I think the story was that he was watching the game, and he died."
Look: I don’t believe this story for a moment, even if Sipe is the one telling it. What kind of doctor takes private medical data to a football team’s headquarters to show the quarterback how he caused a heart attack? What sort of hospital lets (probably) a guy on an EKG watch something stressful on television without keeping a close eye on things? Just how massive a heart attack was this individual supposed to have had, in a hospital, without medical intervention?
My guess is that a tall tale worked its way around the locker room, and Sipe later began to remember it is fact. Or perhaps colorful head coach Sam Rutigliano cooked the story up, maybe with a fake flat-lined EKG to show as a prop in a team meeting.
I mean, I understood the connotation of “Kardiac Kids” when I was nine years old. It wasn’t the sort of nickname that needed an origin story.
Anyway, Sipe was erratic-but-electrifying in 1979. He was magnificent in 1980, winning the MVP award while finishing third to Dan Fouts and Ron Jaworski in both DYAR and DVOA.
Then came Red Right 88.
The Browns hosted the Raiders on one of the coldest afternoons in NFL history. The Raiders took a 12-10 lead. Sipe drove the Browns to field goal range in the waning moments. But Don co*ckroft had an earlier kick blocked and missed both a field goal and an extra point, with a botched snap ruining yet another field goal attempt. co*ckroft made two 30-yard field goals with the wind in the third quarter, but he would be kicking straight into the windy opening in the Cleveland Municipal Stadium bowl.
So Rutigliano called a pass designed for Ozzie Newsome in the end zone. Sipe threw a soggy snowball, and Mike Davis intercepted it.
''I'm not the coach,'' Sipe said after the loss, without bitterness according to Gerald Eskenazi of the New York Times. ''I just follow orders.''
The Raiders would end up beating the Eagles in the Super Bowl. The Browns would plunge to 5-11 the next season.
Sipe split starting duties with young southpaw Paul McDonald during the strike-shortened 1982 season. Midway through the 1983 season, not long after a six-interception meltdown against the Steelers, McDonald replaced Sipe for one-and-a-half games. Sipe later claimed the benching was “scheduled” rest, though observers believed he was dealing with a sore arm.
Sometime late in the 1983 season, Sipe met with the controversial owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals. Before the season ended, the Generals signed Sipe for what was reported as a two-year, $1.9-million deal, much more than the Browns were offering.
The Browns signed McDonald to a four-year contract. Sipe had little time to rest his not-sore-at-all arm before spring football arrived. He played one year for the Generals before their flamboyant owner signed Heisman winner Doug Flutie. Sipe would never return to the NFL.
I was tempted to rank Sipe second overall. He’s the Browns’ all-time passing yardage leader and second to Graham in touchdowns. He was also the Browns quarterback of my childhood, and he engaged in a few epic duels with Jaworski’s Eagles. Kosar’s 1986 and 1987 DVOA ratings pushed him ahead of Sipe, and research has convinced me that Ryan was much more than a Jim Brown handoff machine.
5. (Tie) Milt Plum and Baker Mayfield
South Jersey’s Milt Plum, a three-way star (quarterback/punter/defensive back) at Penn State, was the Browns second-round pick in the 1957 draft. Jim Brown was their first pick. A daring scrambler for his era, Plum started a few games in relief of veteran Tommy O’Connell and mopped up some blowout victories as a rookie, then took over as the starter in his second season.
Plum inherited one of the best situations a young quarterback could ask for. Paul Brown was still the Browns’ head coach. Bobby Mitchell soon joined Jim Brown in the backfield. Veteran end Ray Renfro was an excellent downfield target. Mike McCormack and Jim Ray Smith anchored an offensive line which initally included Hall of Fame kicker/lineman Lou “The Toe” Groza. The early 1960s brought rapid pro football expansion, making it easier for very good players to appear great.
Plum thrived in his nutrient-rich environment. He led the NFL in completion rate from 1959 through 1961. He produced the league’s lowest interception rate in 1960 and 1961. His efficiency rating of 110.4 in 1960, calculated retroactively, was the highest in pro football history until Joe Montana in 1989. Credit either Brown as much as you like, but Plum was pretty good.
Baker Mayfield, of course, inherited one of the worst situations a young quarterback could ask for. He was chosen at the top of the 2018 draft by a Browns team that had been kinda-sorta-maybe losing on purpose for two years due to a dogmatic and foolhardy interpretation of “analytics.” Head coach Hue Jackson wanted to keep Mayfield on the bench. Offensive coordinator Todd Haley wanted to drop an anvil on Jackson’s head. Jackson and Haley soon gave way to Freddie Kitchens, who made his predecessors look like normal humans by comparison.
Mayfield flashed competence at times, despite the best efforts of his coaches. Kevin Stefanski and Joe Berry eventually brought law, order, a strong supporting cast and a more measured approach to analytics to the Browns organization, and by 2020 Mayfield appeared to be growing into a capable starter.
Plum began to chafe under Paul Brown’s playcalling. Brown, meanwhile, had grown impatient with Plum. The Browns traded Plum to the Lions in a six-player blockbuster that featured Jim Ninowski (a former Browns backup and fellow dual-threat), Tom Watkins (a running back trapped on the Browns bench) and Howard “Hopalong” Cassady (a veteran rusher-receiver with a fun nickname).
Mayfield’s performance dipped just as it was time for a contract extension. So Browns owner Jimmy Haslam traded a host of top draft picks for embattled Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, guaranteeing the slimeball a quarter-billion dollars to boot. Mayfield was left to twist in the wind for several weeks before getting traded to the Panthers, quite literally as an afterthought. The Panthers were (and still are) one of the few organizations that could rival the Browns in terms of dysfunctionality.
Plum played well for a Lions team with a stacked defense (Night Train Lane, Yale Lary, Dick LaBeau, Alex Karras, etc.) in 1962 but was up-and-down in subsequent years. He was a fine quarterback, but the extreme efficiency of his early seasons was largely the result of his environment.
Mayfield was unwanted in Carolina, fared well in some late-season emergency starts for a better-coached Rams team, and led a Buccaneers team with an aging cast of stars to the second round of the 2023 playoffs. He’s not a great quarterback, but he’s one of the NFL’s 32 best right now, and it’s becoming clear that the extreme chaos of his early seasons was largely the result of his environment.
6. Bill Nelsen
A journeyman acquired from the Steelers late in the Blanton Collier era, Nelsen had some solid years while Paul Warfield, Leroy Kelly and the Browns organization slowly faded away.
7. Vinny Testaverde
He’s vying to make all 32 segments.
8. Tim Couch
He survived five seasons for what was essentially an expansion team at war with itself.
9. Derek Anderson
A well-built journeyman who parlayed two hot months in 2007 into a then-hefty $24-million contract.
10. Joe Flacco
Fight me.
