Bronco Billy
10-19-2006, 10:21 PM
Found this article on the Browns website. The link is for a video of the Browns players describing "The Drive."
http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/multimedia/mediaplayer.php?id=3001&ftype=article&fid=5914
Moment 39 - The Drive
Steve King, Staff Writer
10.18.2006
Don Shula grew up in Northeast Ohio - in Painesville, to be specific - and played collegiately at John Carroll in Cleveland and then as a defensive back for the Browns before going on to become a Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach.
Thus, no one knew football - or the Browns - better than he did.
So when Shula, as a guest analyst for NBC-TV before Cleveland got ready to face the New York Jets in the 1986 AFC divisional playoffs, said, "The stars are all aligned for the Browns to go to the Super Bowl," everybody in Northeast Ohio took it as gospel.
And that was before that incredible 23-20 double-overtime victory over the Jets that day. If there were any doubters about what Shula said, they were quieted by that win.
After all, the Browns had won the AFC Central title with a conference-best 12-4 record and earned home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. They had gotten their feet wet in the playoffs the year before, blowing an 18-point third-quarter lead and losing 24-21 to the heavily-favored Miami Dolphins. After hiring Lindy Infante in the offseason as offensive coordinator to bolster their passing attack, the Browns seemed to have made the necessary changes to take that next step in 1986.
They certainly had the talent to do so. They had good players at every position. When they would cut a player, other teams would race to sign him because they knew that Browns castoffs were probably better than their starters.
Yes, the stars did seem aligned for the Browns to get that elusive first Super Bowl berth, and that comeback win over the Jets was just the luck - just the little bit of a boost - they needed. Everybody needs some good fortune to win a championship, and that was theirs. The Browns had hit their speed bump, maneuvered themselves over it and were now back up to cruising speed, heading for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where Super Bowl XXI would be held. Nothing could stop them. The football gods had decreed it.
So as the Browns got ready to face the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 11, 1987 at Cleveland Stadium, there was no one in Cleveland - and few around the country, outside of Broncos-mad Denver, of course - who believed the Browns would lose, or could lose.
That only served to make what happened harder to take.
Denver 23, Browns 20. In overtime. In excruciating fashion.
The Drive.
Two decades later, that game - that name, The Drive - still resonates in Cleveland. It causes people to laugh, cry, shake their head, maybe even get a little sick to their stomach and wonder, "What if?"
A million different ways, "What if?"
It is, in fact, the biggest "What if" game in the history of the franchise. It's a great win -- and a great opportunity -- that simply got away.
The pain of that nearly four-hour game is still carried around by every Browns fan who witnessed it. It's football's version of a limp or arthritis -- it's with you wherever you go, it doesn't go away.
There are fans who videotaped the game hoping to come home from the Stadium and watch it and re-live the joy of the victory. Yet some have never watched that tape to this day. It is still setting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust, for there is no joy - only misery - in re-living that game.
Even a Super Bowl win now, two decades later, wouldn't ease that pain, for fans will simply say, "It shouldn't be the Browns' first trip there. It should be the second."
The first should have been on that cloudy, blustery, 30-degree day - a day that became cloudier, more blustery and colder once the afternoon ended.
The game was like a heavyweight fight from the very beginning, with the two teams trading punches - mostly jabs - back and forth.
The Browns opened the scoring when quarterback Bernie Kosar capped an impressive 14-play, 86-yard drive that consumed 7:18 by flipping a six-yard touchdown pass to running back Herman Fontenot with 5:19 left in the first quarter.
The Broncos got their initial two scores off Browns mistakes in the second quarter. Rich Karlis, from Salem, Ohio in Columbiana County, a little over an hour away from Cleveland, kicked a 19-yard field goal after linebacker Jim Ryan intercepted a Kosar pass. Linebacker Ken Woodard then pounced on a fumble to set up Gerald Wilhite's one-yard TD run on fourth down to give Denver a 10-7 advantage.
The Browns tied it at 10-10 when former Washington Redskin Mark Moseley, who was signed when Matt Bahr broke his leg late in the season, hit a 29-yard field goal with 20 seconds left in the first half. It was Moseley whose two field goals eight days earlier in that same stadium had tied the Jets game late in regulation, and then won it in the second OT.
Karlis put the Broncos back on top 13-10 with 2:40 remaining in the third quarter on a 26-yard field goal.
Moseley's 24-yarder just over five minutes later deadlocked the game again at 13-13.
And that's how it stayed until the frantic final minutes of regulation.
Wide receiver Brian Brennan caught a long pass from Kosar and then, after twisting the last Bronco in his path, strong safety Dennis Smith, into a pretzel with a nifty move just outside the Cleveland 10, jogged into the end zone to complete a 48-yard TD play to give the Browns a 20-13 lead with 5:43 left.
It appeared that maybe - just maybe - that would be the score that finally vaulted the Browns into the Super Bowl.
The 79,915 roaring fans at the Stadium firmly believed it. They were delirious.
Their joy became even more unbridled when seemingly the final nail in the coffin was pounded in as the Broncos muffed the return on the ensuing kickoff and ended up with the ball at their own 2.
The Broncos had 5:32 to go 98 yards in a hostile environment, having to move toward the raucous Dawg Pound to do it. Their longest drive all day had been 61 yards, and that resulted in only a field goal. That wouldn't be good enough this time. They needed a touchdown, and the only time the Broncos had gotten one of those in the game was, as mentioned, after a turnover more than two quarters before. And that drive was just 37 yards. Now, 37 yards wouldn't even get them to their own 40.
Indeed, the stars were perfectly aligned now. Shula's Dolphins weren't going to the Super Bowl. In fact, they didn't even make the playoffs that year. So maybe Shula, who already had two Super Bowl rings, could sit back and enjoy his old club - his hometown team - making it.
But then the nightmare of all nightmares slowly began to unfold as the Broncos dug themselves out of that hole and moved their way down the field. It was the drive -- actually, The Drive -- that would launch the Broncos' John Elway, then just another young, talented, undistinguished quarterback, toward his Pro Football Hall of Fame career.
He rushed for 11 yards and a first down to the Cleveland 26, then fired a 22-yard strike to third-down running back Steve Sewell and a 12-yarder to wide receiver Steve Watson to put Denver at the Cleveland 40.
On third and 18 from the 48, Elway made arguably the play of the game when he passed 20 yards to wide receiver Mark Jackson.
Sewell had gone in motion on the play and was directly behind Billy Bryan made the shotgun snap to Elway. The ball hit the ground and bounced right back up, directly into the quarterback's hands.
If ever the fabled Stadium turf should have made its unsavory presence felt and cause the ball to start dancing all over the ground like a Mexican jumping bean, it was then. The fact it didn't, was a bad sign -- a foreshadowing of things to come.
Another pass to Sewell put the Broncos at the 14 with 57 seconds left. Elway scrambled nine yards to the 5 and then on the next play, he fired an across-the-middle laser shot to Jackson for the tying TD with 37 seconds left.
Wow!
Everybody on the Cleveland sideline - and everybody in the Stadium - was stunned.
The Browns still had a chance to win in OT, but in reality, they had no shot. They were too stunned, too overwhelmingly shell-shocked after letting the Broncos off the hook.
The Browns actually got the ball first in OT, but gave it right back to Denver after just three plays. And starting from their 25 following Jeff Gossett's punt, the Broncos moved right down the field, getting to the Cleveland 15, from which Karlis put a 33-yard field goal high over the left upright -- maybe, it was awfully close -- to give his team the three-point win.
The Stadium was deadly silent. What should have happened -- what appeared destined to happen -- didn't. Amazingly so.
Don Shula wasn't right after all. The stars lied.
And 20 years later, Browns fans haven't quite gotten over it.
http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/multimedia/mediaplayer.php?id=3001&ftype=article&fid=5914
Moment 39 - The Drive
Steve King, Staff Writer
10.18.2006
Don Shula grew up in Northeast Ohio - in Painesville, to be specific - and played collegiately at John Carroll in Cleveland and then as a defensive back for the Browns before going on to become a Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach.
Thus, no one knew football - or the Browns - better than he did.
So when Shula, as a guest analyst for NBC-TV before Cleveland got ready to face the New York Jets in the 1986 AFC divisional playoffs, said, "The stars are all aligned for the Browns to go to the Super Bowl," everybody in Northeast Ohio took it as gospel.
And that was before that incredible 23-20 double-overtime victory over the Jets that day. If there were any doubters about what Shula said, they were quieted by that win.
After all, the Browns had won the AFC Central title with a conference-best 12-4 record and earned home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. They had gotten their feet wet in the playoffs the year before, blowing an 18-point third-quarter lead and losing 24-21 to the heavily-favored Miami Dolphins. After hiring Lindy Infante in the offseason as offensive coordinator to bolster their passing attack, the Browns seemed to have made the necessary changes to take that next step in 1986.
They certainly had the talent to do so. They had good players at every position. When they would cut a player, other teams would race to sign him because they knew that Browns castoffs were probably better than their starters.
Yes, the stars did seem aligned for the Browns to get that elusive first Super Bowl berth, and that comeback win over the Jets was just the luck - just the little bit of a boost - they needed. Everybody needs some good fortune to win a championship, and that was theirs. The Browns had hit their speed bump, maneuvered themselves over it and were now back up to cruising speed, heading for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where Super Bowl XXI would be held. Nothing could stop them. The football gods had decreed it.
So as the Browns got ready to face the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 11, 1987 at Cleveland Stadium, there was no one in Cleveland - and few around the country, outside of Broncos-mad Denver, of course - who believed the Browns would lose, or could lose.
That only served to make what happened harder to take.
Denver 23, Browns 20. In overtime. In excruciating fashion.
The Drive.
Two decades later, that game - that name, The Drive - still resonates in Cleveland. It causes people to laugh, cry, shake their head, maybe even get a little sick to their stomach and wonder, "What if?"
A million different ways, "What if?"
It is, in fact, the biggest "What if" game in the history of the franchise. It's a great win -- and a great opportunity -- that simply got away.
The pain of that nearly four-hour game is still carried around by every Browns fan who witnessed it. It's football's version of a limp or arthritis -- it's with you wherever you go, it doesn't go away.
There are fans who videotaped the game hoping to come home from the Stadium and watch it and re-live the joy of the victory. Yet some have never watched that tape to this day. It is still setting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust, for there is no joy - only misery - in re-living that game.
Even a Super Bowl win now, two decades later, wouldn't ease that pain, for fans will simply say, "It shouldn't be the Browns' first trip there. It should be the second."
The first should have been on that cloudy, blustery, 30-degree day - a day that became cloudier, more blustery and colder once the afternoon ended.
The game was like a heavyweight fight from the very beginning, with the two teams trading punches - mostly jabs - back and forth.
The Browns opened the scoring when quarterback Bernie Kosar capped an impressive 14-play, 86-yard drive that consumed 7:18 by flipping a six-yard touchdown pass to running back Herman Fontenot with 5:19 left in the first quarter.
The Broncos got their initial two scores off Browns mistakes in the second quarter. Rich Karlis, from Salem, Ohio in Columbiana County, a little over an hour away from Cleveland, kicked a 19-yard field goal after linebacker Jim Ryan intercepted a Kosar pass. Linebacker Ken Woodard then pounced on a fumble to set up Gerald Wilhite's one-yard TD run on fourth down to give Denver a 10-7 advantage.
The Browns tied it at 10-10 when former Washington Redskin Mark Moseley, who was signed when Matt Bahr broke his leg late in the season, hit a 29-yard field goal with 20 seconds left in the first half. It was Moseley whose two field goals eight days earlier in that same stadium had tied the Jets game late in regulation, and then won it in the second OT.
Karlis put the Broncos back on top 13-10 with 2:40 remaining in the third quarter on a 26-yard field goal.
Moseley's 24-yarder just over five minutes later deadlocked the game again at 13-13.
And that's how it stayed until the frantic final minutes of regulation.
Wide receiver Brian Brennan caught a long pass from Kosar and then, after twisting the last Bronco in his path, strong safety Dennis Smith, into a pretzel with a nifty move just outside the Cleveland 10, jogged into the end zone to complete a 48-yard TD play to give the Browns a 20-13 lead with 5:43 left.
It appeared that maybe - just maybe - that would be the score that finally vaulted the Browns into the Super Bowl.
The 79,915 roaring fans at the Stadium firmly believed it. They were delirious.
Their joy became even more unbridled when seemingly the final nail in the coffin was pounded in as the Broncos muffed the return on the ensuing kickoff and ended up with the ball at their own 2.
The Broncos had 5:32 to go 98 yards in a hostile environment, having to move toward the raucous Dawg Pound to do it. Their longest drive all day had been 61 yards, and that resulted in only a field goal. That wouldn't be good enough this time. They needed a touchdown, and the only time the Broncos had gotten one of those in the game was, as mentioned, after a turnover more than two quarters before. And that drive was just 37 yards. Now, 37 yards wouldn't even get them to their own 40.
Indeed, the stars were perfectly aligned now. Shula's Dolphins weren't going to the Super Bowl. In fact, they didn't even make the playoffs that year. So maybe Shula, who already had two Super Bowl rings, could sit back and enjoy his old club - his hometown team - making it.
But then the nightmare of all nightmares slowly began to unfold as the Broncos dug themselves out of that hole and moved their way down the field. It was the drive -- actually, The Drive -- that would launch the Broncos' John Elway, then just another young, talented, undistinguished quarterback, toward his Pro Football Hall of Fame career.
He rushed for 11 yards and a first down to the Cleveland 26, then fired a 22-yard strike to third-down running back Steve Sewell and a 12-yarder to wide receiver Steve Watson to put Denver at the Cleveland 40.
On third and 18 from the 48, Elway made arguably the play of the game when he passed 20 yards to wide receiver Mark Jackson.
Sewell had gone in motion on the play and was directly behind Billy Bryan made the shotgun snap to Elway. The ball hit the ground and bounced right back up, directly into the quarterback's hands.
If ever the fabled Stadium turf should have made its unsavory presence felt and cause the ball to start dancing all over the ground like a Mexican jumping bean, it was then. The fact it didn't, was a bad sign -- a foreshadowing of things to come.
Another pass to Sewell put the Broncos at the 14 with 57 seconds left. Elway scrambled nine yards to the 5 and then on the next play, he fired an across-the-middle laser shot to Jackson for the tying TD with 37 seconds left.
Wow!
Everybody on the Cleveland sideline - and everybody in the Stadium - was stunned.
The Browns still had a chance to win in OT, but in reality, they had no shot. They were too stunned, too overwhelmingly shell-shocked after letting the Broncos off the hook.
The Browns actually got the ball first in OT, but gave it right back to Denver after just three plays. And starting from their 25 following Jeff Gossett's punt, the Broncos moved right down the field, getting to the Cleveland 15, from which Karlis put a 33-yard field goal high over the left upright -- maybe, it was awfully close -- to give his team the three-point win.
The Stadium was deadly silent. What should have happened -- what appeared destined to happen -- didn't. Amazingly so.
Don Shula wasn't right after all. The stars lied.
And 20 years later, Browns fans haven't quite gotten over it.