Written by Jonathan Knight

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I’ve always found it hilarious how much hand-wringing and panty-bunching occurs over preseason football games.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people - particularly Browns fans - get excited. Summer is still hanging around like an in-law who won’t take the hint and we yearn for any indication that there will soon be a time when humidity doesn’t oppress our will to live like a third-world dictator. Plus, we’ve all been worn down by the Indians’ annual dissolve and need a fresh start.

So when there’s suddenly football, we perk up and our pulse starts to quicken. And then, in our zeal, we go way too far and start to believe that how the Browns fare in their exhibition games in any way predicts how they will fare in the regular season.

And that, friends, is trying to rationalize an episode of Scooby-Doo.

Not surprisingly, for as much energy as we spend sifting through the rubble of each preseason scrum in the days following, we have no lasting memory of them the way we do for actual games, even post-1999 games. That’s because having any kind of lasting emotional memory of a preseason game is like looking back fondly at that time you vacuumed the living room.

That being said, there have been a handful of preseason games in the Browns’ long history that, like the NBA and Blockbuster Video, teeter on the brink of marginal relevance.

August 18, 2008

The Poopy-Pants Game

Giants 37, Browns 34

With expectations high coming off their 10-6 mark in 2007, we tuned in to ESPN’s broadcast of the Browns’ preseason tilt against the defending Super Bowl-champion New York Giants with much anticipation. And when the Browns took the field, our brains exploded and began to ooze out of our ears like hot cauliflower.

They were wearing brown pants. And literally every person in the world hated it.

They then proceeded to play as dazed as we were, falling behind 30-3 before the third-stringers rallied to make it sound much closer than it ever was.

The brown pants were quickly shoved back into the closet but re-emerged the following year and worn for every road game, apparently as a threat to fans that no matter how bad the team was, it could always get worse.

 

August 9, 1999

The Browns are Back! (But Not Really...This is Just an Infuriating Tease)

Browns 20, Cowboys 17 (OT)

This was arguably the high point of the last 13 years of Browns football - preseason and regular season. In the Hall of Fame Game, they looked just about on-par with the playoff-caliber Cowboys, each of whom - based on what we would later see from the ’99 Browns - must have had a bone-marrow transplant earlier that afternoon.

Tim Couch threw a long, pretty touchdown pass to Kevin Johnson and the Browns lit up Canton like Las Vegas that night, pulling out an overtime victory on a field goal by - appropriately - Phil Dawson. Who, believe it or not, entered the game as the Browns’ third-string kicker.

 

August 14, 1995

ZeierStarter

Browns 55, Bears 14

We all thought the 1995 Browns were on their way to the Super Bowl, and this game seemed to justify our misguided thinking. Not only did they slap around the Bears for 55 points - a total usually not reached by a Bill Belichick offense over the course of three combined games - but they were led by a magnificent performance by our next great quarterback.

With Vinny Testaverde sidelined with a staph infection (Christ - even back then it was a problem), balding rookie Eric Zeier started and looked unstoppable: 14 of 16 for 158 yards, throwing for one touchdown and running for another. The only question left pertained to whether his induction to the Hall of Fame would be via a unanimous first ballot. Then, as you remember, he turned out to be the Brady Quinn of the ‘90s.

If this little story doesn’t temper your intensity about the preseason, see your doctor.

 

August 24, 1992

The Exhibition Chainsaw Massacre

Vikings 56, Browns 3

The Vikings scored touchdowns on the first play of the game, a Hail Mary on the last play of the first half, and six other occasions in the worst preseason defeat in Browns history. Bill Belichick’s genius defensive schemes allowed the Vikings to roll up 500 yards without any sinew of motivation and they would have topped 60 points had they not fallen on the ball at the Cleveland 1 in the final minute of the contest. And by that point, the Minnesota offense was being run by the Boys and Girls Club of St. Paul.

But - in a move we’d later become all too familiar with by way of the Dolans - the outcome of the game meant less than the Four Tops/Temptations concert afterward.

 

August 6, 1989

God Save the Browns

Eagles 17, Browns 13 (at London)

Once upon a time, the Browns were respected enough that the NFL tapped them to fly across the ocean to represent the sport to a bunch of tea-drinkers who don’t like to watch athletic events in which people use their arms and hands.

Today, the league is trying to send the Browns to Tijuana to play a preseason game. And then not bring them back.

 

August 18, 1988

North of the Border...For Reasons Nobody Understands

Jets 11, Browns 7 (at Montreal)

This was just weird. Then and now.

The Browns crossed the Canadian border to play the Jets in - I shit you not - the “Molson Challenge” at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. (And why exactly? To build an American football fan base amongst French-speaking people? Who had already made it clear they didn’t like baseball or basketball? And had no problem with the Montreal Gazette putting coverage of the game on pg. 8 of the sports section after seven pages of gripping offseason hockey news?)

After the Browns lost even more valuable preseason practice time when their equipment was held up at customs because they didn’t have the correct paperwork, this bizarre little field trip ended with a fittingly bizarre final score of 11-7.

 

September 5, 1987

Mad Dog the Hero

Browns 30, Packers 24 (OT)

And you thought Mike Junkin never did anything in the NFL. The Mad Dog in the Meat Market wrapped up the ’87 preseason by picking off a pass and returning it 21 yards for a touchdown in sudden-death overtime to beat the Packers. No one has seen him since.

Worth noting: the only reason Junkin was able to make the interception was because he blew his defensive assignment. Maybe I should walk back my earlier comment about the preseason not accurately forecasting the future...

 

August 17, 1985

Bernie Stinks

Browns 28, Eagles 14

6 for 22 for 97 yards with an interception and no points scored. Brandon Weeden’s numbers from his NFL debut in Detroit? No - Bernie Kosar’s from his first preseason start 27 years earlier. BK was so bad out of the chute that Marty Schottenheimer had no choice but to end the quarterback competition at that point hand the gig to Gary Danielson.

Let’s all thank Jesus there was no internet back then or Bernie’s career would have ended that night.

 

August 1, 1981

The Return of the Kardiac Kids

Browns 24, Falcons 10

In this case I use the word “return” in the context of having the receipt and walking up to the customer-service counter.

Seemingly picking up where they left off during the euphoric 1980 season, the Browns’ offense looked unstoppable in the Hall of Fame Game, rolling up nearly 500 total yards as they dominated the Falcons, who’d made the playoffs the year before.

Apparently they blew their wad that afternoon in Canton as they went on to lose 14 of the next 20 games they played in 1981, ensuring that 1980 would remain frozen in our memories three decades later.

 

September 3, 1972

The Browns Invade C-Bus

Bengals 27, Browns 21 (at Columbus)

A year after playing a preseason game at Notre Dame and two weeks after playing the Lions in Ann Arbor, the Browns hit the Horseshoe to face the Bengals before 84,816.

The Browns lost - as part of their infamous 0-6 wide-awake preseason nightmare of ’72 - but the game itself is less memorable than the number of Central Ohioans who paid to see it. These days you’re lucky if the Browns and Bengals can combine to draw 84,000 in separate home games.

 

August 29, 1970

Watering Down History

Bengals 31, Browns 24

Before the NFL ever hired a publicist or had any concept of promoting itself, it undercut the massively dramatic first encounter between Paul Brown and the Browns by having the teams play in the preseason.

In their first-ever trip to antiseptic Riverfront Stadium, the Browns quickly went ahead 14-0, but then the second-stringers gave up the lead (as they’re trained to do) and the Bengals pulled out a win. They presented Paul Brown with a game ball (again, this was a preseason game) afterward and he showed more affection to that football than he likely ever did to his son Mike.

 

September 3, 1966

Southern-Fried Nonsense

Browns 13, Steelers 10 (at Birmingham)

There’s nowhere in the world that appreciates the Browns-Steelers rivalry more than Birmingham, Alabama.

Naturally, I’m kidding. This was the NFL hilariously attempting to expand its brand by taking a rust-belt pro rivalry into a sleepy college town serving as the capital of intolerance slap-bang in the middle of an ugly era for civil rights in the already backward and inherently racist Deep South.

Rumor has it Jim Brown retired a month earlier just to avoid this trip. And even a half-century later, who can blame him?

 

August 12, 1955

We Lose to a Bunch of Frat Boys

College All-Stars 30, Browns 27

In the 42-year history of the annual exhibition that pitted a team of just-graduated college all-stars against the defending NFL champs, only nine times did the college guys win. This game - played exactly three months before Marty McFly would be sent back to the future - was one of them.

By the third quarter, Paul Brown was on the phone convincing Otto Graham to come out of retirement.

 

August 12, 1950

They Belong

Browns 38, Packers 7 (at Toledo)

Everybody was a little anxious as the Browns transitioned from the AAFC to the NFL and that little specter of doubt crept in when the mediocre Packers marched right down the field to score a touchdown on their first possession.

In those next few minutes, everybody in Toledo’s Glass Bowl wondered if the Browns were perhaps not as good as advertised and wouldn’t be able to handle NFL opposition.

Two plays later, the Browns tied it and went on to a blowout win that showed they were about to make the NFL their bitch.

 

Just think - maybe the Browns’ next utterly meaningless preseason game will someday wind up on a completely forgettable list like this.

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