Sam Rutigliano

Sam Rutigliano, the coach of the "Kardiac Kids" Browns who got to the playoffs in 1980, is still kicking around the Cleveland area, and still coaching professional football at age 74 (thanks again to Jeff Brown for the link).

That 1980 Browns team might have been the best shot we've had at a title in the last 40 years in Cleveland. I can't remember which Brown said it, but one of our guys predicted, before the frigid AFC playoff game between the Browns and Raiders in January 1981, that whoever won that game would win the Super Bowl. He was right, whoever it was. Unfortunately, that team was the Raiders. That was the Red Right 88 game, and I will never forget it. I told my dad it was Don Cockroft's fault we lost that game, because he had missed two field goals and an extra point in the game. He didn't make a kick the whole game. In an odd symmetry, the score was 7-6 at halftime, and it ended 14-12. But if Brian Sipe had found a young Ozzie Newsome in the corner of the end zone (he was open), we Generation X Cleveland fans might not to this day be lamenting our lifelong professional sports championship drought.

There's a key difference between Red Right 88, on one hand, and The Drive and The Fumble, on the other. Yes, The Drive and The Fumble both happened in AFC Championship games, and Red Right 88 was in a divisional playoff. But The Drive and The Fumble were both against Denver Broncos teams that went on to get embarrassed in the ensuing Super Bowls (they lost Super Bowl XXI to Phil Simms' Giants, 39-20, in a game that wasn't as close as the final score indicated; and they lost Super Bowl XXII to Doug Williams' Redskins, 42-10). The 1980 Oakland Raiders went on to be crowned champions after blowing out Ron Jaworski's Eagles 27-10 in Super Bowl XV. Losing in dramatic fashion to a team that would go on to get trounced is one thing; losing in dramatic fashion to the eventual champions is quite another.

That was Sam Rutigliano's only playoff team in Cleveland, though he was here for six years. He never won a playoff game as an NFL coach; he never got another chance after Art Modell fired him and gave his job to his defensive coordinator, Marty Schottenheimer. He coached at Liberty University for 11 years, retiring in 1999. The last few years, he's been an assistant coach in NFL Europe, which is the closest thing the NFL has to a minor league.

Sam Rutigliano is a good man, and I wish him well. I heard him speak a few years after the Browns let him go, and I honestly can't remember what the occasion was, but my dad took me to the event. I'll have to ask my dad what that was about. But I remember it was shortly after the Browns had traded Chip Banks for the draft pick they used on Mike Junkin, and Rutigliano, answering a question from the audience, correctly predicted it would turn out to be a mistake.