Chris Oakley
Banned
We should have known it was too good to be true.
We should have been careful not to get our hopes up.
But when the Browns pulled off the upset win over Denver in the '86 AFC championship game
everybody in Cleveland just went nuts. We hadn't played for an NFL title since Jim Brown left,
and we'd never even been to a Super Bowl. We figured Elway and the Broncos had been our
toughest test in the playoffs, and now that we'd passed it beating whatever poor saps that the
NFC threw against us in Super Bowl XXI would be a piece of cake. How in the world could we
possibly lose?
Well, we sure found out in a hurry.
Things started out all right. We got a nice field goal on our opening drive, and I'll never forget
how loud everybody in my house cheered when Bernie Kosar threw that forty-nine yard bullet
to Ozzie Newsome for the touchdown that put us ahead of the Giants 10-0. We didn't sweat it
too much when Raul Allegre hit a field goal of his own to cut our lead to 10-3; we were all sure
the Browns defense could hold New York in check until Bernie got the ball back.
And then WHAM! With just five minutes to go until halftime, Lawrence Taylor came right out of
nowhere and just flattened Bernie like a runaway train. Even before the ref's whistle blew you
could see Bernie was in deep trouble; when they took him off the Rose Bowl turf on a golf cart
my heart sank like a lead balloon. “We're dead.” my brother moaned when Pat Summerall and
John Madden confirmed Bernie had been taking to Huntington Hospital for X-rays.
Sure enough New York started taking us apart during the third quarter. Simms actually ran the
game-tying touchdown into the end zone himself on the Giants' second drive, and they took a
13-10 lead on a 32-yard field goal by Allegre. On our next possession, we had a great chance
to retake the lead, but that butterfingered idiot Byner-- even today I can't say his name without
wanting to throw up –blew it for us by fumbling on third and goal. Two plays later Mark Bavaro
turned into the Road Runner and sprinted all the way from the Giants' own six-yard line to put
them ahead 20-10. At that point, a lot of the Cleveland fans who'd come out to the Rose Bowl
to see the game started walking out, and I couldn't blame them; with Bernie out of action, and
the backup guy Pagel struggling to find his rhythm, it was obvious our chances of winning the
Super Bowl were slim and getting slimmer by the minute.
By the start of the fourth quarter we were down 41-10 and taking the worst beating any team
had gotten in a Super Bowl since the Bears squashed the Patriots in Super Bowl XX the year
before. The difference between us and New England is that the Patriots started to turn things
around after their beatdown...it's scary how good those guys have gotten since they hired Bill
Parcells in '94. First he coaches them to back-to-back Lombardi Trophies, then he pulls off all
those mega-deals as their GM, and now he's partners with Bob Kraft in the owners' group that
brought Tom Brady to New England-- not to mention four more Super Bowl championships.
And us? We ended up losing to the Giants 44-16 and we haven't been back to a Super Bowl
since. In '87 we barely managed to squeak into the wild card game in the playoffs, and when
we had to go to Mile High Stadium for that rematch with the Broncos they just killed us. After
that we didn't play another postseason game until 2005, when we got that OT win against the
Indianapolis Colts only to get crushed by the Steelers in the next game. My dad was so mad
about the Browns losing Super Bowl XXI that he took every piece of Browns gear that he had
and threw it in the trash. I've only just started watching Cleveland games again in the last two
years or so, and I almost stopped when I heard Jimmy Heslam wanted to hire that nutjob and
a half Manziel to be the Browns' new quarterback. Lucky for us he got signed to the Cowboys
by Jerry Jones, who might be the one guy in the NFL who's dumber than Heslam.
This might sound crazy, but I can't help sometimes almost feeling like it might have better if
we'd lost to the Broncos in '86. To come that close to a Super Bowl trophy only to have it get
ripped away at the last second hurts worse than you can imagine. And Bernie...he was never
the same after that Taylor hit. Poor guy spent most of the '87 season on the bench and ended
up having to retire before the '88 season started. From what I've seen on ESPN lately, he can
barely even walk anymore these days.
THE END
Last edited: