Otto Graham believed the Browns were at least two, and possibly three, touchdowns better than the best team in the NFL. They figured to be at least that much better, and probably considerably more, than the best team in the AAFC’s eastern division, whether that team was Baltimore or Buffalo. They’d get the chance to prove it on the field in two weeks. As for Graham’s claim to superiority over the NFL champions, proving it would likely be impossible. In spite of some public clamor, and some clamor among those with the power to make a showdown game between the AAFC and NFL champions happen, the majority of NFL owners were dead set against it. The older league had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Win or lose in the AAFC title game, Paul Brown would be honored by the Cleveland Touchdown Club on December 21. Said the club’s president, Carl Brubaker, “Brown has done a tremendous job in building the Cleveland team into a great attraction in pro football.”1 He’d be given kudos for that accomplishment at a luncheon at Cleveland’s Hollenden Hotel.
Graham addressed the Touchdown Club on December 6, the day following the victory over Brooklyn that completed Cleveland’s perfect regular season. Brown and his coaches were seated at a table near the podium, and Graham told the gathering it was they who deserved credit for the team’s monumental accomplishment of 14 victories in 14 games. “Paul Brown is a great coach, but I wouldn’t want to work for him. He works at it from morning to night, and he keeps the midnight oil burning when we have a tough game coming up. And his staff has to burn it right along with him.” The players’ workload was light compared to the hours Brown and his coaches put in each week.
Graham was asked about Brown’s system of sending in offensive plays by rotating guards Bob Gaudio and Lin Houston. Noting that reporters called the two players “messenger guards,” Graham responded, “We’re going to get them Western Union caps next year.” Looking at his coach and grinning, Graham said, “Believe me, I call about 99 percent of the plays Paul sends in, and I catch the devil the other 1 percent of the time for not following instructions.” Although Graham and Brown worked well enough together to take the Browns to 10 championship games in 10 years, both were strong-willed men, and they butted heads many times during their decade together over Brown’s insistence on calling the team’s offensive plays.
Graham commented on the fact the Browns would begin practicing on Wednesday for an unknown opponent in the AAFC championship game on December 19. “We’ve always had a much easier time against Buffalo,” he said. Then, echoing a point made by someone with close ties to the Bills before the first game between the two clubs in September, Graham made the observation, “Something always seems to happen to them early in the game, and then they seem to fall apart. I think Y.A. Tittle, the Baltimore passer, is a better thrower than George Ratterman of Buffalo. Tittle really fires that football, and if he gets hot, he can make things plenty tough for you.”2
Even though the Browns had played both the Colts and Bills three times in 1948 (including exhibition games), no stone would be left unturned in the team’s preparation for the title game. Brown and assistants Fritz Heisler (guards), Dick Gallagher (ends), and Blanton Collier (backfield) would spend Sunday afternoon in Baltimore scouting the game that would decide who the Browns would meet for the AAFC championship.
A last-minute effort was being made to put together an all-star game featuring the best professional players and the best collegians, to be staged on New Year’s Day 1949 in Baltimore’s Babe Ruth Stadium. It has to be assumed that the game wouldn’t have included college stars who’d be busy with their teams playing in bowl games on January 1. Brown said he had no interest in coaching the professional all-stars. “Our season doesn’t end for another week, and furthermore, I’ll be in Florida for the Orange Bowl game on New Year’s Day, looking over a few football players. I’m definitely not interested in coaching such an all-star team, and none of our players will be permitted to play in the proposed game. It has been a long, hard season, and they have had enough football for the year.”3 Other professional teams undoubtedly felt the same way the Browns did, and the proposed game remained a figment of someone’s imagination.
In a profile on Graham in the Plain Dealer, Brown expressed the opinion, “I wish the general public could get to know our boys a little better. If they did, some of them might change their minds about professional football.”4 In the minds of many fans, the pro game still ranked a step, or more, beneath the college sport. That was evidenced by the amount of newspaper space devoted to each. It has to be surmised that the sports editors of Cleveland’s three dailies were simply giving their readers what they thought they wanted, and that was far more coverage of college football than professional, even when the local professional team was the defending champion of its league and undefeated.
When the statistics were tallied at the close of the AAFC’s third season, the western division champion Browns boasted of two offensive leaders and a runner-up. A big day by Dons quarterback Glenn Dobbs in his team’s season finale (a defeat) against the 49ers pushed him past Graham in the total offense department. Dobbs threw 55 passes against San Francisco and completed 27 for 405 yards. He ran for 26 more, giving him 2,942 yards for the season. Graham finished second with 2,859. Graham completed 173 passes on the season for 2,713 yards and 25 touchdowns. He ran for 146 yards.
Mac Speedie led all AAFC receivers with 58 catches for 818 yards, an average of 14.1 yards per reception. Marion Motley led all AAFC rushers with 964 yards.
On December 5 and 12, the Baltimore Colts and Buffalo Bills played eight quarters of football. The Colts out-played the Bills in seven of those quarters. That was good enough to force a playoff game to determine the eastern division’s champion. It wasn’t good enough to be that champion, however.
A crowd of 27,327 in Babe Ruth Stadium (six thousand fewer than had watched the same two teams play in the same stadium the previous week in the last game of the regular season) watched the Colts take a 17–7 lead into the fourth quarter of the playoff game. Baltimore was 15 minutes away from a trip to Cleveland to meet the Browns for the AAFC championship. In those 15 minutes, however, Bills quarterback George Ratterman got hot, with some assistance from the side judge. Buffalo put three touchdowns on the board to shock the home team, 28–17.
The Colts scored first on a 16-yard field goal by Rex Grossman and led, 3–0, after one period. Buffalo got on the board in the second quarter. Ratterman’s eight-yard pass to halfback Bill O’Connor on the first play of the quarter climaxed a 50-yard drive and gave the Bills a 7–3 lead they maintained at halftime. Baltimore seemingly took control of the game in the third period. A 71-yard drive ended with a nine-yard run by halfback Bus Mertes and gave the Colts a 10–7 lead. That was followed by an 87-yard march that Mertes capped by bulling over from the one, and Baltimore had a 17–7 advantage after three quarters. The Colts’ defense was playing well, and the 10-point lead appeared to be safe. But Ratterman had other ideas.
Buffalo’s fourth-quarter onslaught began with a 66-yard pass from Ratterman to end Bill Gompers. With Baltimore now clinging to a precarious 17–14 lead, the Bills started the drive toward what proved to be the game-winning touchdown. Included in the drive was the play that inflamed an already angry crowd of Colt supporters. Throughout the game, the fans hadn’t been pleased with decisions made by side judge Tommy Whelan, and they let him know it. With about five minutes to play and the Bills moving, Baltimore tackle Johnny Mellus recovered a loose ball, apparently stifling the drive and possibly saving the game for the Colts. Whelan, however, ruled the play had been an incomplete pass rather than a completion and a fumble, and the Bills retained possession. The crowd seethed. Six plays later, Ratterman hit Alton Baldwin with a 25-yard touchdown pass, giving Buffalo a 21–17 lead. The already furious fans erupted. The mood got even surlier when Buffalo’s Ed (Buckets) Hirsch picked off a Y.A. Tittle pass at Baltimore’s 20-yard line and waltzed into the end zone to put the icing on the cake.
After the final gun, fans threw anything they could find at Whelan as he made his way off the field, with the help of the police and some of the players. A few fans decided to personally tell the side judge what they thought of his decisions, and Whelan’s eye was swollen when he arrived in the officials’ dressing room. His cap and shirt had been torn. As Whelan was dressing, fans lined up outside the stadium’s administrative offices, where the referees quarters were located, and threw bottles at the structure. A fire broke out in the stadium’s stands, which police blamed on angry Colts fans venting their frustration at Whelan. Surprisingly, just one fan was arrested during the melee, and charged with disorderly conduct. Whelan had to be smuggled out of the stadium and to the airport on the Bills’ team bus. He remained defiant through the carnage.
Deputy commissioner O.O. Kessing told reporters he’d talked to Whelan, and the side judge insisted he’d made the right call on Mellus’ fumble recovery. According to Kessing, Whelan told him, “That’s the way I saw it, and I’d call it that way seven days of the week.”5 The Baltimore fans weren’t the only ones livid at Whelan. Colts president Robert C. Embry angrily confronted commissioner Jonas Ingram and accused Whelan of costing the Colts the game, and the division championship. Embry didn’t file a formal protest, however, and Ingram declined to comment.
The Colts did ask that Whelan be barred from officiating any Baltimore games in the future. Embry sent a letter to Ingram reiterating, “We are firmly convinced that extremely poor judgment was used by Mr. Thomas F. Whelan in this instance. In order to be fair to Mr. Whelan and to the fans in Baltimore, we do not think it wise to have him officiate in any capacity any future games of the Baltimore Colts, whether at home, or in the home city of our opponent.”6 Subsequent developments in the war between the AAFC and NFL would raise the possibility that there would be no future Baltimore Colts games for anyone to officiate.
Ratterman threw only seven passes in the game’s first three quarters. He threw 11 in the fourth, two for touchdowns. After being benched for alleged indifferent play by head coach Red Dawson earlier in the season, Ratterman had rallied his team from a 10-point deficit on the road, and led it to the league’s championship game. The jubilation in the visitors’ locker room in Babe Ruth Stadium probably wasn’t tempered by reality. Dawson’s plucky crew was confident that it could, and would, give the Browns a run for their money on Cleveland’s lakefront in seven days.
The 1948 champion of the AAFC would be determined in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium on December 19, in the third meeting of the year (fourth if their August exhibition game is counted) between the Browns (14–0) and the Buffalo Bills (8–7). In their two regular season encounters, the Browns had outscored the Bills, 73–27. An old football bromide claims, with some validity, that it’s difficult to defeat a team three times in one season. But the championship game would be every bit the mismatch the records of the competing teams seemed to indicate it would be.