#24

 

OTTO GRAHAM

The leather helmet without bars. The jumping-pass poses arranged by photographers. Otto Graham couldn’t possibly have played the same game that Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, and Peyton Manning played, could he?

There were none of the same trappings around pro football in the 1940s and ’50s that exist today. It wasn’t an event to go to a game on a Sunday afternoon. Players weren’t lionized because they were good enough to play for pay. No, they were just doing a job.

Graham, as the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns, did his job remarkably well. During his 10-year run as the Browns quarterback, Graham led them to the championship game every year. They won seven of those title games.

When Graham lined up at quarterback, the Browns would win. Sometimes they would be blowouts and sometimes they would be close games, but the Waukegan, Illinois, native and Northwestern University graduate found a way to win football games. Stack all the top quarterbacks in the game and arrange them by winning percentage. Graham, who compiled a record of 105–17–4 during his decade in Cleveland stands on top of all of them.

Statistically, it is a different game today than it was in Graham’s era. Today, quarterbacks regularly complete 62 to 67 percent of their passes and it is taken as a matter of course. But it wasn’t always that way. Up through the late 1970s, if a quarterback completed 50 percent or more of his passes he was usually one of the better passers in the league. Graham was far better than that. During his career with the Browns—four were in the All-America Football Conference—his worst numbers came in 1952 when he completed 49.7 percent of his passes. However, it was not exactly a terrible year for Graham. He completed 181 of 364 passes for a career-high 2,816 with 20 touchdowns and 24 interceptions and the Browns won the NFL’s American Conference before losing to the Detroit Lions in the NFL championship.

It was the next year that was truly amazing for Graham. He completed 167 of 258 passes for 2,722 yards, a 64.7 completion percentage. That kind of accuracy would be lauded today but back then it was simply off the charts—like Bob Beamon’s 29-foot-2½ inch broad jump in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. (Beamon’s mark stood for 23 years before it was finally broken by Mike Powell in 1991.) No other starting quarterback completed better than 54 percent of his passes in 1953. Graham threw for 11 touchdowns and ran for six more as the Browns went 11–1. While they lost in the title game again to the Lions, 17–16, they made Detroit pay the following year with a 56–10 romp in the title game.

Graham’s teammates knew they were playing with greatness. “I remember Otto as a truly great quarterback and a truly great leader,” said Bill Willis, a Hall of Fame defensive lineman who played with Graham on the Browns from 1946 through 1953. “He was a real general on the football field. All of the guys respected him. Nobody talked in the huddle, unless he gave them permission. Being the outstanding player he was, he was just as outstanding a person. He never really bragged about his abilities, even though his abilities were so good. He was very personable in the locker room. On the field he was all business. He was the guy you wanted to have in the huddle when the game was on the line.”

Nobody appreciated Graham more than his coach, Paul Brown. Gruff and demanding, Brown got more than he had ever hoped for with Graham. “The test of a quarterback is where his team finishes,” Brown said. “By that standard, Otto was the best of them all.”

Brown and Graham combined to form one of the most productive coach-player relationships in sports history. The Browns so dominated the AAFC—winning four consecutive titles, going undefeated in 1948 and setting all the league’s attendance records—that the NFL could not ignore them any longer. The Browns and two other AAFC teams (the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts) joined the NFL prior to the start of the 1950 season. NFL commissioner Bert Bell knew a great promotion when he saw one, and he made the first game of the season a matchup between the Browns and the two-time defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles. It was eagerly anticipated by football fans throughout the country and the belief was that the powerful Eagles would hammer away at the supposedly inferior Browns. Instead, Graham and the Browns used their superior skill to embarrass the Eagles and the NFL in a 35–10 rout.

“That was the game I remember most,” Graham said. “We were so fired up, we would’ve played them for a keg of beer or a chocolate milkshake.”

It was a remarkable win that validated not only the Browns but the other two AAFC teams that came into the NFL. Graham and the Browns would also bookend that performance at the end of the season. After going 10–2 during the year and tying the New York Giants for the American Conference title, they beat the Giants in a one-game playoff, 8–3, and then edged the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL championship game, 30–28. Graham threw four touchdown passes in the win over the Rams.

Graham’s spectacular ability to lead his team into the championship game 10 straight years will always be his legacy; he only averaged 10 yards or more per attempt in three seasons. On the other hand, quarterback Sid Luckman reached that figure twice, Norm Van Brocklin achieved it twice, Sammy Baugh never reached it, nor did greats Benny Friedman, Bob Waterfield, and Y.A. Tittle. All of those quarterbacks, like Graham, are in the Hall of Fame.

Graham never missed a game due to injury in his career but a blow to the face in a 1953 game resulted in an awful cut inside his mouth that required 15 stitches to close. After that, he became the first player to wear a facemask on his helmet. He was as innovative off the field as he was productive on it, and Graham will always be remembered as the greatest winner in the game’s history.