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Sundays in the Pound: The Heroics and Heartbreak of the 1985-89 Cleveland Browns

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I wasn't around when the Cleveland Browns were the "New York Yankees of football" and they routinely played for championships throughout the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I was in grade school when Brian Sipe led the Kardiac Kids, and at that age I was more interested in playing with my toy soldiers than watching three hours of football on Sundays. However, my freshman year of high school was Bernie Kosar's rookie year, and that was the true start with my passionate love affair with the Browns which has endured the 1990 implosion, the wretched Belichick years (I don't care how many Superbowls that guy wins as far as I'm concerned he'll ALWAYS be the worst coach in history of the Browns because he actually made me dislike team!), Modell's treacherous move, three years without a team, and the ongoing expansion building process which has the new Browns looking like the old Tampa Bay Buccaneers- wallowing in a culture of losing and defeatism.

Yet my passion for the Browns remains high mainly because I remember, as author Jonathan Knight sets forth in his preface, when "the Cleveland Browns used to be fun to watch" and I hope for day when the new Browns recapture that feeling for me. In his "Sundays in the Pound," Knight sets forth a narrative of the 1985-1989 Browns- how they were built, how they played, and what they accomplished. To most Browns fans, those teams are the best remembered and beloved of their lives- four division championships, five playoff appearances, and three trips to the AFC Championship game- it was a level of success that had not been seen in Cleveland sports since the 60's. Knight sets forth all the victories and defeats that led to that success and reminds us once again of how close those teams came to true greatness. The 1986 and 1987 AFC Championship games routinely make lists of the "greatest games ever played" in NFL history and Knight does a great job of showing why those dramatic games remain bittersweet memories held by all Browns fans.

Knight's book also makes it clear that it just wasn't success on the field that made the 80's Browns so loved, it was also the players who made up those teams. The names Mack & Byner, WebStar, Big Daddy, Top Dawg and Mighty Minnie, Clay, Ice Cube, the Wizard, and, of course, Bernie still resonate deeply with Browns fans. These were guys you knew bled orange and brown. In those days before free agency, most of them played almost their entire careers with the Browns. Many of them, after their playing days were done, settled permanently in the Cleveland area where they are lionized to this day.

For the most part, Knight's book is a straight narrative of the 1985-1989 seasons. For research, it appears he culled old newspaper articles, NFL films archives, and performed interviews with a handful of players and coaches from that era: Mike Baab, Bob Golic, and Marty Shottenheimer. In a way, it's almost like reading a compendium of Plain Dealer and Browns News Illustrated articles from 1985 to 1989. However, Knight is a talented writer and what could have been a mish-mash of dozens of game summaries actually blends together pretty well. Also Knight does provide some analysis especially pinpointing the moment where the Browns' fortunes seemed to spiral downward- the unfathomable trade of center Mike Baab on the eve of the 1988 season. According to Knight, Baab's trade was the catalyst for everything that followed- the downfall of the offensive line which led to the battering of Kosar, which led to the 3-13 1990 season, which led to hiring of Belichick, which led to Kosar being cut, which led to Modell moving the team, and which led to sad sack organization the expansion Browns are today. It's a little melodramatic, but Knight may have a point.

It's sad that Browns fans have to look back nearly twenty years in order to remember a time where their team was not only competitive but among the elite of the NFL. However, I do treasure those memories of listening to Nev Chandler, watching snowballs whizzing through the air at Cleveland Stadium against the Oilers in 1988, flipping on the radio and hearing silly Browns song after silly Browns song, the absolute pandemonium when the Browns tied up score to send the game into OT against the Jets, jumping up and down in my parents' living room when Slaughter caught Bernie's TD pass to defeat the Steelers in OT in 1986, my dad muttering "They'll stop them here" when the Browns had Elway at 3rd and 18 during the Drive, jumping up from my chair arms held up high in triumph when I saw Byner apparently cross the goal line and then grabbing my hair and screaming "NO!" when I realized he had fumbled, and the faces of a group of guys in their 30's, obviously mill and factory workers, looking out on the field in shock and disbelief as the Broncos mobbed Rich Karlis.

Maybe one day, the new Browns will create similar memories, but its doubtful those will mean as much as those created by the 1985-1989 Browns who were very special teams to anyone who remembers watching them play.

I love this book (as well as "The Kardiac Kids", also by this author). As someone born and raised in Cleveland, I've followed the Browns since the early seventies. The Schottenheimer era, along with the first year of Bud Carson's reign, contained some of the most exciting (and heartbreaking) Browns games I can remember. I still have a lot of VHS tapes of those games, which I occasionally get out to re-live the days when the Browns were a real contender.

Mr. Knight's book begins with the last part of Sam Rutigliano's reign as head coach, when the Kardiac Kids were becoming a memory and the team began to return to the losing ways of the mid seventies. We learn how Rutigliano was fired and replaced by Marty Schottenheimer and how the team acquired the players whose names would come to represent the newer, better Browns: Kosar, Slaughter, Dixon, Golic, Byner, and so many others.

There were a lot of classic games in the late eighties, and Knight takes us through all the important moments - the 1985 divisional playoff in Miami, the thrashing of the Bengals at Cincinatti in 1986, the Steelers games, the Oilers games, the great playoffs against the Jets in '86, the Colts in '87, the Bills in '89, and, of course, those nightmarish Broncos.

When the games are really big, Knight's coverage is quite in depth. For example, we read Nev Chandler's own words as he describes Kosar's touchdown pass to Brennan in the '86 AFC Championship for the radio audience: "... he's firing the home-run ball for Brennan... turns one way, turns another...HE'S GOT IT AT THE FIFTEEN! TEN! FIVE........" I still get excited at that! For a moment anyway, we were going to the Super Bowl!!

Besides the game action, we also learn a lot of what was going on behind the scenes - the death of Don Rogers, the issues that caused Schottenheimer to leave for Kansas City after the 1988 season, Kevin Mack's drug addiction, and how the bottom finally fell out in Carson's second year.

I can't praise this book highly enough for the true Browns fan. Pick it up and enjoy the great memories. It will help to hold you over till that sweet day when we finally, someday, get another contender in Cleveland. And when we do, I'll be cheering as loud as ever!

I read this entire book in two days, and I was completely taken back to the mid 80's. Cleveland has lived through more heartbreak then any city in the histroy of sports. It has been 40 years since we won a championship, Almost 60 since we won a world series, and NEVER for the Cavs. So other then people over 50 or so, no one has experienced the excitement of a championship.

This era, from 1985-1989, got us closer then ever (in football), and every season was full of almost unbearable excitement. It ALWAYS came down to the last game, the last minute, the last second. And usually we lost.

Hard to believe that only 22 years ago, Bernie Kosar gave up a truck full of money, and the possibility to go early in the forst round(possibly #1), to play for his hometime Brownies. Reading this book brings back terrific memories, and Jonathon Knight has scored his second Browns classic.

I purchased this book on a lark right when the 2006 football season began. As the Browns started their all-too-familiar path of on-field ineptitude and losing, I decided to pull this book out for a read.

Thank goodness I did, as it made me remember how good things used to be for those few years in the 1980s. The author did a great job of describing the games and providing insight as to what was going on within the team, organization and community at the time.

A wonderful read that took me mind away from another abysmal season and reminded me why I love this team.

Very well written account of a great era in Cleveland Sports history. I had moved back to town in the time frame and was so excited to have the Browns back in my life that strongly. A great group of guys. Really is a shame they were not able to take it to the next level, but in the end, truly, the experience is way more about the journey than the end result. To Earnest Byner.....a quote I once heard from Julius Erving after he had lost to Kareem and the Lakers for the second time and lost in the champioinship for the third time...."In order to be great, you have to DARE to be great, and I will continue to dare to be great." I think of that qoute when I think of his experience in those years.

I loved this book, I vaguely remember these Browns teams as I was only about 10 years old, but I knew how much they meant to people around me. Reading this enable me to learn how this team connected with the city and how much heartbreak there was. I couldn't pt the book down wanting to relive everybit of the history.

"Sundays in the Pound: The Heroics And Heartbreak of the 1985-1989 Cleveland Browns" is by far the best book I've ever read on the Cleveland Browns (or football, period!). Jonathan Knight takes us right back to that era of Cleveland football that sent our Super Bowl hopes soaring,then crashed us to the ground...year after year. I had attended several of the games that he addresses in this book and Knight does a fantastic job of putting the reader right into the Dog Pound as he describes the action. I learned much about the Browns of the late 1980's by reading this and the book will certainly generate its share of "watercooler conversations" in the future. I only wish that most of the books I read could be half as entertaining as this one. I applaud Jonathan Knight for his efforts.

JONATHAN KNIGHT DOES A GREAT JOB TAKING US THRU SOME GREAT AND EXCITING YEARS DURING THE MID TO LATE 1980'S CLEVELAND BROWNS SEASONS. HE REALLY BRINGS BACK SOME GOOD AND NOT SO GOOD NOSTALGIC MOMENTS. WE START WITH THE DISASTEROUS 1984 SEASON WITH THE RELEASE OF GOOD GUY SAM RUTIGLIANO AS HEAD COACH AND IS REPLACED BY MARTY (SHOT AND A BEER) SCHOTTENHEIMER. FROM THERE THE BROWNS PEAK UNTIL 1986 WHEN THEY HAD THEIR BEST TEAM OF THIS ERA LOSE IN THE FAMOUS "THE DRIVE" GAME. FROM THERE THE BROWNS WENT DOWN HILL A BIT EACH YEAR BUT STILL REACHED THE PLAYOFFS. AS A RESULT OF BAD DRAFTING, IDIOTIC PLAYER JUDGEMENTS AND THE CONSTANT INTERFERENCE OF BIG MOUTH ART (THE LIAR AND BS'ER) MODELL THE TEAM WENT BELLY UP. WITH THE RELEASE OF BERNIE KOSAR THE ATTENDANCE WENT THRU THE BASEMENT. AND WITH THE HIRING OF BILL (PRE NEW ENGLAND) BILICHICK THE FANS STAYED AWAY IN GROVES. POOR ART, HE WANTED A NEW STADIUM BUT WANTED THE TAX PAYERS TO PAY FOR IT. NOT GETTING IT HE LEFT AND THE RAVENS WERE BORN. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ALL BROWNS FANS. A GREAT READ.