Top five 1970s Cleveland Browns games to watch while social distancing

First Monday Night Football game, Jets at Browns, 1970

First Ever Monday Night Football: New York Jets at Browns

The Cleveland organization was well-connected to the New York Media thanks to Art Modell. Give the man his props, he pushed for Monday Night Football while many owners were opposed to it, and it turned out to be a brilliant call.

Because of Modell’s involvement in negotiating the deal with ABC, the Browns were the first team up against the hottest ticket in football, the New York Jets and flamboyant quarterback Joe Namath.

This was also the first week of true interleague play, as the NFL and American Football League were fully merged into a single league, with the Browns, Steelers and Colts transferring to the American Football Conference to balance the number of teams. That was another good decision by Modell, to form a division with Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. That does not mean he should be forgiven for his ultimate crime of moving the Browns, but the give the man his due, Monday Night Football is an American Institution.

The entire Monday Night Football experience was a total novelty, as well as playing against the former AFL teams that the Browns had never seen before, other than in exhibition games.

The pregame show is worth watching in its own right, with Howard Cosell, Keith Jackson and Don Meredith in the booth together. Nobody had ever put three announcers in a booth before, and no one knew if it was going to work. From the start, Cosell and the producers played a joke on Meredith by showing multiple scenes of him getting sacked, and Meredith was a little hot. That friction continued for the duration of their relationship, and for the record, America was 100 percent behind Meredith. The bombastic Cosell was a phenomenon. Everybody hated him, but they tuned in to watch whenever he was announcing. It was great when the sharp-witted Meredith would come back at Cosell.

Namath was a star of unbelievable magnitude, after having led the Jets to a “guaranteed” upset victory in Super Bowl III after the 1968 season. In essence, he placed the entire American Football League on his back and beat up the supposedly invincible Baltimore Colts. It was totally shocking to most observers that they won, and that game revolutionized the NFL forever. With 20-20 hindsight, it is obvious that the Jets and the AFL were tactically superior to their NFL counterparts. Moreover, they had legitimate talent, especially Namath, who was an incredible athlete despite playing his entire career on bad knees, much like Bill Nelsen of the Browns.

As a kid, I was suitably impressed that this fellow Namath did not have short hair, was getting rich from commercials, and was appearing in Hollywood movies with the sexiest actresses of the day, including Raquel Welch and Ann Margret. He broke all the rules. The news media fawned on him wherever he went. It was really Joe-mania for several years, deservedly so.

The Jets were coming off a 10-4 season that saw them repeat an AFL Eastern Conference Championship, though they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs had gone out and destroyed the Minnesota Vikings, the latest in a string of supposed “teams of the century.” In any case, suddenly the AFL had miles of credibility, and it was going to be exciting to watch NFL teams do battle with the former AFL teams.

There is no possible way that the Browns should have won this game. Behind star running backs in Emerson Boozer and Matt Snell, the Jets outgained the Browns on the ground 168 yards to 76. Namath was his usual sensational self, throwing for 298 yards (plus another seven yards from understudy Al Woodall). That was a lot of real estate in the 1970 dead ball era, while Nelson eked out only 145 passing yards for the Browns.

The Jets had star receivers in Don Maynard and George Sauer, and the Browns were not able to stop them. Sauer had a huge game with 172 receiving yards. In all, the Browns were outgained, 454 yards to 221 yards. But on the other hand, the Browns had a touchdown on special teams, and Namath threw three times to the guys in the home white jerseys.

Billy Andrews, Jim Houston and Walt Sumner each had an interception, and each returned the ball 25 or more yards. Homer Jones was another less-than-brilliant acquisition by Modell, brought in to replace Warfield. Jones would come up a little short with only 10 catches in his entire Browns career, but in this game he scored a touchdown on a kick return and Modell looked like a genius.