Top 5 Cleveland Browns games from Bill Belichick era to watch while social distancing
New England at Cleveland Browns, Parcells vs Belichick, 1994
Bill Parcells retired too early from the Giants, after winning his second Super Bowl in 1990. By 1993, his competitive fires had brought him to New England. Belichick and Parcells had been an incredible team, and both were very highly respected. Now they were on opposite sidelines. Who would win?
The Browns were quarterbacked by Mark Rypien in this one. Vinny Testaverde was out with a concussion suffered at Denver the previous week.
Rypien had won a Super Bowl with the Redskins, but followed that with a poor campaign, and then missed time with an injury. Joe Gibbs retired and was replaced by Richie Petitbon, and suddenly Rich Gannon rose in the depth chart to knock Rypien off his perch. Hence, he was available and Belichick signed him to back up Vinnie Testaverde.
This writer was working in Boston in 1993, and so I watched a lot of Patriots football that year. Drew Bledsoe was just learning to play quarterback under Parcells, who was legendary for his sideline blowups when Bledsoe would make a mistake. Against the Browns, Parcells kept his composure, but it was not a pretty game for Bledsoe
One of the impressive things about Parcells as a Coach was that he was a devotee of “Power Football” in New York. But in New England, he looked at his roster and did not find the running game he was accustomed to in New York. He had a decent short-yardage back in Marion Butts, a 6-foot-1 248 back who plodded for a respectable 703 yards, but only 2.9 yards a carry. After that, Kevin Turner and Leroy Thompson were more of a threat catching passes than running the ball.
The video quality of this game is poor in the beginning, but if you can hang in there, it gets better.
Believe it or not, though the Patriots fell to 3-6 in this game, Parcells got them to regroup and reel off seven straight wins to make the playoffs. The Browns would again be their opponent, and Belichick beats his former mentor again.
DPD sleuths were not able to locate decent game footage from the playoff game, but there is a few minute re-hash of the game.
Video link :New England at Cleveland Browns, Parcells vs Belichick, 1994