Cleveland Browns: Remembering Don Rogers

The Cleveland Browns lost safety Don Rogers to a drug overdose 30 years ago this month. The pain of that day still resonates with his family and former teammates.

The Cleveland Browns had a clear plan for building their defense in the mid-1980s and headed into the 1984 NFL Draft looking for the final piece to the puzzle.

The Browns had selected Hanford Dixon and Eddie Johnson in 1981 and Chip Banks in 1982. With the downfall of the USFL, Frank Minnifield joined the squad in 1984 and Mike Johnson followed in 1986.

As the team worked to get all the defensive pieces in place, the Browns were only missing one key ingredient: a hard-hitting safety who would leave opposing wide receivers looking over their shoulders when they crossed the middle of the field.

In the first round of the 1984 draft, the Browns found their man by selecting UCLA safety Don Rogers, a 6-foot-1, 206-pound force who was compared by UCLA fans to Ken Easley, the 1984 Defensive Player of the Year and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s All-1980s team.

“I’m so hurt. I don’t know what to do, what to think. All I know if I hurt.” – Eddie Johnson on the death of Don Rogers

Rogers started 14 games as a rookie, earning Defensive Rookie of the Year honors, and with Dixon and Minnifield locking down receivers and Rogers taking care of anything else, the had built one of the league’s best secondaries.

That dream scenario would only last until June 27, 1986.

On that day, just one day before his wedding, Rogers died from a drug overdose. According to Jonathan Knight’s Sundays in the Pound, the post-mortem toxicology report revealed that Rogers had 5.2 milligrams of cocaine per liter of blood in his body – an amount that is five times what is considered the lethal level.

This week marks 30 years since drug cut short Rogers’ life and promising career. For Cleveland fans too young to remember Ernie Davis, Rogers’ death was the first time that, as fans, we had to deal with this kind of tragedy. (Although it would be far too brief before fans had to face it again following the deaths of Steve Olin and Tim Crews of the Cleveland Indians in a boating accident in the spring of 1993.)

“I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” Marty Schottenheimer on the death of Don Rodgers

It was widely believed at the time that Rogers was a first-time drug user, but a story in The Los Angeles Times on Aug. 3, 1986, reported that two unnamed former teammates at UCLA had seen Rogers use cocaine and marijuana during his final two years at UCLA. In addition, Rogers was reportedly under large financial pressure from his family.

There were also signs early on that things were not right with Rogers, according to former head coach Sam Rutigliano in his book, Pressure (h/t @byJeffRich):

"I could sense something was different about Don. I discovered that Don Rogers was a follower. He desperately wanted to be accepted by his peers. A football team has a small group of negative people and a small group of positive ones. Don began to follow the negative ones."

Even though it has been 30 years, Dixon, who was in attendance at Rogers’ bachelor party the day before he died, still carries guilt from that fateful weekend, as he described in his book, Day of the Dawg (according to cleveland.com):

"Dixon heavily criticizes himself for a worse instance of what can only be termed malign neglect. He blames himself for the death of safety Don Rogers after a cocaine overdose in the summer of 1986. The presumption by many media members was that Rogers, who died only eight days after Boston Celtics draftee Len Bias succumbed to an overdose, was new to the sports party scene and OD’d out of unfamiliarity with drugs. Dixon’s book disputes that, as he describes Rogers, on the night before the wedding rehearsal, leaving the hotel with a woman on each arm for, as Dixon calls it, “his last great party.”"

"Dixon, who admits to having experimented with marijuana in college, “like 90 percent of America,” writes that Rogers had asked him to ride in the same car to the dress rehearsal the next day. Dixon thought Rogers was going to enter drug rehab, but as Rogers left, Dixon sensed trouble. “It was going to be his last hurrah. His last great party,” Dixon writes. “I’m sure to this day he wanted to get the whole drug thing over with and that’s what he was going to tell me the next day.”"

As tragic Rogers’ death was, the situation for his family has seemingly only gotten worse in the ensuing decades. On Monday, the anniversary of his death, The Undefeated posted an article on Rogers’ short life and detailed the problems his family has dealt with, including:

“He had a life, he was a big-time football star, and that was pretty cool.” – Don Rodgers on his father

His mother, Loretha Rogers, reportedly never recovered from losing her oldest child and passed away from heart failure in 2000 at the age of 58.
His brother, Reggie, entered a counseling center shortly after his rookie season began in 1987 with the Detroit Lions. The next season he killed three teenagers in a drunken-driving accident and was convicted of negligent homicide. Following his brief NFL career, Reggie was arrested numerous times and died in 2013 of cocaine and alcohol intoxication.
His sister, Jackie, one of the top high school basketball players in Northern California, dropped out of Oregon State after one year and has battled substance abuse problems. According to the story, she has worked to get her life on the right track in recent years.
His son, Don, who was just four at the time of his dad’s death and who has struggled with financial problems. “I constantly hear he’s a great guy, and it seems everybody loved him,” Rodgers said. “But I don’t remember too much personal interaction. How do I find out about my dad aside from what I hear? I Google him.”

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The impact of Rogers’ death was felt on the field, as it is not unfair to wonder if he would have made a difference in the AFC Championship Games against the Denver Broncos in 1986 and 1987. Would John Elway have been able to drive 98-yards to tie the 1986 game if Rogers had been playing? Could the defense have put up a better effort in 1987 with Rogers patrolling the middle of the field?

While those are questions that will forever remain unanswered, Rogers’ death did have a lasting impact on the NFL. Four days after his funeral, the league announced a new drug program requiring players to submit to two random tests during the regular season for cocaine, marijuana, heroin, amphetamine and alcohol.

Even though the change in the drug policy had been in the works for a while, Rogers’s death certainly helped drive the point home that the league and its players could no longer conduct business as usual, and that “what a player does away from the team doesn’t matter” could no longer be an appropriate response.

Rogers only played two seasons for the Browns, but he had a lasting impact on his coaches, teammates and fans who remember watching him play.

Next: RG3 must impress early in 2016

What are you favorite memories of Don Rogers’ career in Cleveland? Do you think he would have made a difference against Denver in the playoffs?

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