by Ian O'Connor
And so, as a result, nobody won. Testaverde went down with a shoulder injury in the fourth quarter of a 28–23 victory over Pittsburgh, made possible by Metcalf’s punt-return touchdowns of 91 and 75 yards, giving the Browns sole possession of first place. They played Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” on the Municipal Stadium speakers, and the 37-year-old Matthews, a Brown since 1978, said the team had taken a big step toward the glory days of the eighties.
Only Kosar was suddenly back under center, something Belichick never again wanted to see. One windy day in Berea, after Bernie threw some fluttering passes to nowhere, the coach and his staff watched film of the practice afterward and spotted something hard to believe. Michael Jackson, receiver, had run an end-around and thrown the ball 60 yards in the air.
“Bill rewinds the tape all the way back to Bernie barely getting it beyond 30 to 35 yards,” recalled Phil Savage, coach and scout. “And in his colorful communication skills he says, ‘What the fuck? Guys, look at this. This asshole barely cracks 35 against the wind, and we’ve got a receiver who just launched it 60.’ You could get a sense he was building a case in his mind that Bernie was at the end.
“Tranquill was in a tough position. He was the middleman, and he got caught in a vortex. He was close to Bernie, and Bernie thinks he can play and Bill thinks he’s washed up. Tranquill said to [Belichick], ‘If you want to fire him, that’s your prerogative. But let’s not sit here and ridicule this guy.’”
During the Browns’ bye week, Belichick suddenly cut two respected veterans, cornerback Everson Walls and linebacker David Brandon, shaking up his team despite its 5-2 record. Belichick would shake up the entire city, state, and league on November 8, Black Monday, the day after the Browns lost yet another game to John Elway’s Broncos. Elway was tremendous, as always, and Kosar was something less than that. Down 29–7 at home, with thousands of fans already out in the parking lots, Kosar ran the final play of his Cleveland Browns career.
Leroy Hoard, running back out of Michigan, was a big admirer of Kosar’s ability to overcome all of his physical shortcomings. With Bernie, Hoard said, “you kind of had to close your eyes and wait for it to happen.” Kosar threw the ugliest passes with the ugliest form. He’d plant his front foot to the left, as if he were throwing to that side, and then fool the shifting defense by spinning the ball down the middle of the field. Somehow, some way, the damn thing found its target. Bernie was the great improviser, and in what would be his final huddle as a Brown he was going to do some improvising with Belichick’s call. He was going to come up with a play that he would later say he just “drew up in the dirt.”
“We were in the huddle, and Bernie gets down on a knee and looks up at Jack [Michael Jackson],” Hoard said. “ ‘You’re supposed to run a corner on this play, but I want you to take three steps to the corner and, if it’s Cover 2, hit the seam and go to the post. That ball will be in the air.’ I’ll be damned, that ball was in the air and Jack came out of that break and it was a touchdown. Imagine the face on your coach, who’s so organized, with everyone on the same page, to see that play as a touchdown. Bill had to think, If I let this fly, how far is this going to go?”
Belichick wasn’t about to let it fly, not anymore. Metcalf said Kosar was famous for looking over at the sideline from the huddle and ignoring the plays the coaches wanted him to run. In this case, people on the sideline said Belichick screamed obscenities at Kosar, who then returned fire. One starter who disagreed with Kosar’s stubborn approach to play calling, who saw it as insubordination, heard Belichick shout at the quarterback, “Run the play, motherfucker.” So Belichick met with Modell that Sunday night. The coach walked upstairs to the owner’s office after every home game to share thoughts on the wins and losses, to decompress, but there would be no winding down this time.
Belichick and Modell met for three hours that night and, with the backing of Jim Brown and Mike Lombardi, who had been promoted to director of player personnel, the coach convinced Modell that Kosar not only was shot physically, but was playing for himself. It wasn’t an easy sell. Modell had watched Kosar play a full half against Miami on a broken ankle the year before and nearly pull out a victory in what the owner, as well as Dolphins coach Don Shula, said was the gutsiest thing they had seen. Bernie was his quarterback, his guy, his football son.
Modell went home that night saddened by what he was about to do. He called for a meeting of the entire staff the next morning, and when the owner entered that meeting room, he told the assistants he wanted to go around the table and hear their opinions on whether Kosar should stay or go. Savage was in the room, and he recalled that John Mitchell, defensive line coach, was called on first.
“No way he was going against Bill,” Savage said of Mitchell. “Each coach fell in line. [Receivers coach] Richard Mann advocated for Bernie but said he’s not the same guy. Everyone said Bernie’s not the same guy.”
Modell had his answer. “Once we make this move,” he told the group, “the fires will be roaring tonight.”
Kosar was summoned to Modell’s office around 11:30 a.m.; the quarterback figured his boss wanted to talk about the offense. When he entered and saw Belichick, he realized that this wasn’t going to be a shoot-the-shit session about expanding the passing game. Kosar was told he was fired. “It was a painful experience for Bernie and myself,” Modell said. “Bill talked to him. I talked to him.” Kosar then asked if he could talk to Modell alone. Belichick left the room, and quarterback and owner spent their last 20 minutes together as employee and employer.
When word got out, fans reacted as if Modell had fired Paul Brown all over again. The Browns’ switchboard lit up with ticketholders demanding their money back, and angry fans called and faxed the local papers and radio stations to vent about Belichick, who described the move as “the most difficult decision I’ve ever made or been a part of.” Belichick spoke of his respect for Kosar as a person and competitor but pointed out he was 5-11 in his last 16 games.
“Basically,” the coach said, “it came down to his overall production and the diminishing of his physical skills.”
Kosar was deeply hurt by the claim that he couldn’t be a winning quarterback anymore, and he ripped Belichick for running off Reggie Langhorne and Webster Slaughter, who had caught a combined 21 passes for 338 yards and two touchdowns for Indianapolis and Houston the previous day. Kosar said the Browns had attempted to portray him as uncoachable, a notion he called bullshit.
“How ironic is it that my last pass was a 38-yard post pattern for a touchdown, huh?” he asked.
Modell had no choice but to go along with this in support of a coach he’d already predicted would be the last one he hired. As he walked into the press conference with Belichick, he turned to the PR man, Byrne, and said, “You know, a lot of owners would be in the South of France today.”
The front-page headline in the Plain Dealer the next morning read SACKED, in big, bold wartime type next to a picture of Kosar, in uniform, bowing his helmetless head. The four lines of subheads on the front page read this way:
BROWNS BOUNCE BERNIE
HE’S LOST IT, BELICHICK SAYS
I HAVE NOT, KOSAR INSISTS
FANS IN A FRENZY
The Kosar firing took up almost the entire front page, save a story on the upcoming Al Gore–Ross Perot debate over NAFTA on CNN’s Larry King Live. Inside the pages of the Akron Beacon Journal, a 20-year-old student at Baldwin Wallace was pictured holding a sign that read CUT BELICHICK, NOT KOSAR! and she was reported to be among a dozen students protesting outside the team’s Berea facility.
“I had a window facing the street, where I watched film,” Savage said. “I took my handkerchief and waved it outside the window like a white flag.”
One of the players hit the hardest was Kosar’s center, Steve Everitt, a first-round pick out of Michigan who had grown up a Hurricanes fan in Miami. He idolized Bernie and considered the opportunity to be his teammate a dream come true.
“When that
happened to Bernie,” Everitt said, “it was like a relative had died. The mood was awful on the team.”
It was just as bad around the city. Times were so tense, Belichick’s children, who attended the private Old Trail School, in Bath, were no longer riding the bus to school, in order to stay clear of teasing classmates.
“It was hard on us,” Debby Belichick would say. “There were threatening calls made to the office, and the kids had people watching them on the playground at school. We had people watching the house, and it became so absurd that I’d look out the window and wonder, Hmm, should I make them some lunch? I wanted to laugh about it because it was so ridiculous, but we actually had to be very careful.”
The Belichick children wouldn’t be attending any more games in 1993. Though the shocked players didn’t have a choice, many of them couldn’t understand why, with Testaverde injured and the Browns still holding a share of first place, they would have to play the next four games without an established quarterback. Todd Philcox, the healthy alternative, had one career start to his name.
“Why would you do that,” Michael Dean Perry asked, “when we had no other quarterback?”
“I believe cutting Bernie at that point was a mistake,” said kicker Matt Stover. “I felt they should’ve benched him.”
“We’re 5-3,” Eric Metcalf said, “so for us, that’s what felt kind of silly at the time . . . Bernie didn’t change the play into an unsuccessful play. He made it happen. You can call it insubordination all you want, but he gave us opportunities to win. I thought that’s what it was all about.”
“We had enough issues,” Rob Burnett said, “so don’t cut him. Cut him after the season. We thought nobody was safe after that, but we already knew that. The Bernie thing was unnecessary, but Belichick was running around with the sickle.”
Over two weeks, the sickle had claimed Walls, Brandon, and then the biggest available victim, Kosar.
“We had a winning record,” said Anthony Pleasant, “and all of a sudden he made all those cuts and we went downhill from there.”
It wasn’t fair to Philcox, who simply wasn’t qualified to handle the immense responsibility just dropped in his lap. In the quarterbacks’ room, he’d watched Kosar decipher defenses and predict alignments as if he were a veteran coordinator. On the field, he’d watched Kosar “chewing out a guy’s ass” whenever a teammate wasn’t meeting Bernie’s standards of effort and execution.
But Philcox saw what everyone else saw in the Kosar-Belichick relationship. “They certainly butted heads,” he said. “It was obvious, and you could see it escalating to a degree.” The fallout had Philcox starting on the road against Seattle. Tranquill and Savage rode next to each other on the team bus that day. Tranquill turned to his friend and said, “What in the world is going on? The end of time is upon us.”
On the very first play from scrimmage, Philcox dropped back to pass and had the ball knocked from his hand by Seattle’s Terry Wooden. Robert Blackmon scooped it up and ran it into the end zone. Fourteen seconds into the game and the Browns were already down a touchdown in what would be a dispiriting 22–5 defeat. Philcox completed 9 of 25 passes for 85 yards. He fumbled twice, threw two interceptions, and was sacked for a safety.
“He was in a tough situation,” said Belichick, the man who put him there.
Meanwhile, new Dallas Cowboys quarterback Bernie Kosar—acquired as insurance behind the injured Troy Aikman—completed 13 of 21 passes for 199 yards and a touchdown and avoided any interceptions or sacks in leading his team to victory over the Phoenix Cardinals. Kosar suddenly had a chance to win the Super Bowl ring that had eluded him in Cleveland, and the Browns suddenly had a better chance of missing the playoffs.
Modell and Belichick were sitting ducks, all alone on an island surrounded by hostile seas. Everyone felt free to take a shot at them. Gary Danielson, an ESPN broadcaster and an ex-teammate of Kosar’s with the Browns, was introduced to a Cleveland scout named Terry McDonough when they crossed paths at the University of Kentucky before a Wildcats football game. Danielson opened their conversation by saying, “I’m one of Kosar’s best friends. You cut him. Your head coach is a jerk and I hope you lose every one of your games.” Caught by surprise, McDonough didn’t get a chance to gather his thoughts and respond until seeing Danielson again ten minutes later.
“Hey, Gary,” he called out. “Did you mean what you said about Coach Belichick?”
“Yeah,” Danielson said.
McDonough, who cut a thick, intimidating figure, jumped out of his chair and chased a cowering Danielson out the door while screaming obscenities at him and threatening to kick his ass.
Not many Clevelanders remained quite as loyal to Belichick. At the Browns’ next home game, their first since Bernie was bounced, tens of thousands of pissed-off fans showed up to protest this unfathomable mistake by the lake. Fans outside the stadium sold BILL SUCKS T-shirts, Kosar masks, and BOOT BELICHICK bumper stickers. Signs hung inside read CAN THE LITTLE MAN and WILL ROGERS NEVER MET BILL BELICHICK, and a banner tethered to a plane flying above the stadium read JUMP ART AND TAKE BELICHICK WITH YOU. GO BK.
Modell knew that cutting Kosar would temporarily change the way the fans looked at the coach and the team, but he’d underestimated the impact of the move. “Bernie did a masterful job of making us look villainous on that,” said Jim Bailey, Browns executive vice president. “I don’t blame him at all. We didn’t realize he was that good at it.”
The Browns next lost to the Houston Oilers; of course they did. Philcox threw four interceptions, and when it was over, three police officers escorted Belichick off the field. A mob of some 200 to 300 fans gathered outside the Browns’ locker room and repeated a chant first heard in the fourth quarter, “Bill must go,” along with “We want Belichick.” The fans might as well have been carrying torches and pitchforks. They were shouting and banging on metal trash cans along the concourse, and when the losing coach appeared, a circle of cops with billy clubs led him to the postgame interview room, housed in a nearby trailer.
Belichick could still hear the calls for his head as he took the podium and faced the news media. His wife cried while watching the televised scene from her loge. “To quote Buddy Ryan,” Bill said, “if you listen to the fans, you will be up there with them. I have to do what I think is right, and I’ve been doing that. I know this team is headed in the right direction.”
The security detail led him safely back to the locker room. Belichick lost three of his next four games, leaving him 1-5 since making the most difficult decision of his football life. Before one of those post-Bernie games, Debby Belichick was helping collect canned goods for a charitable cause while a man was selling a BILL SUCKS T-shirt ten feet away and an FBI agent was watching her in response to the phoned-in threats.
The head coach of the Cleveland Browns was taking hits all over the league. In a Houston Chronicle column, under the headline “Browns’ Belichick Unpopular with Everyone,” respected NFL writer John McClain wrote the following:
“In 14 years of covering the Oilers, I never have seen a coach work harder at being a cold fish than the Browns’ Bill Belichick. He possesses the worst communicative skills of any coach I have interviewed . . . In the wake of the Bernie Kosar debacle, Browns fans are finding out what most of the players and reporters who cover the team knew—that Belichick is an insecure control freak with a little man’s mentality. The chip on his shoulder is the size of a football, and anyone who even thinks about questioning his authority is given a bus ticket out of town.”
Gary Tranquill didn’t question Belichick’s authority. He only questioned Belichick’s qualifications to be heavily involved in the offense. He thought his boss treated him very well personally, but professionally he felt suffocated. “I managed it for three years,” Tranquill said, “and it got to a point where I just said, ‘This is not worth it. A lot of things are going on here that’s not the way it should be.’ And I decided it was time for me to leave.”
So he left Cleveland after another 7-9 season, becoming the latest casualty of the Belichick regime. Modell was growing impatient. He was already on record saying he would “get out of town” if he had to fire this head coach. Only a winning season in 1994 might prevent all that from happening. But then again, maybe not.
Art Modell told associates that he felt like Professor Henry Higgins, the Rex Harrison character in My Fair Lady who tried to teach the Aubrey Hepburn character, a Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle, how to lose her working-class accent and talk like a duchess. Bill Belichick was that kind of project.
Modell’s wife, Pat, told her husband to buy the coach some suits and get him out of those dreadful cutoff sweats. Pat told Art to tell Bill to sit up and stand straight in press conferences, to speak clearly, and to comb his hair now and then. But turning the Browns’ head coach into a refined gentleman would be harder than turning the Browns into serious contenders.
In the film room and on the practice field, Belichick was in the habit of referring to opponents and even his own players as “fucking assholes.” Belichick didn’t berate people in a Parcellsian way, but some of his players thought he was the most profane coach they’d ever had.
“I don’t think he’s going to run a seminar on public relations,” Art Modell said.
This would become readily apparent to those who worked with Belichick on his weekly Browns Insider TV show, which was often filmed on Tuesday or Wednesday morning at 4:30 or 5:30, the coach’s preferred hour. Belichick’s cohost was Jim Mueller, who had a good working relationship with the coach.
“We tried to soften Bill’s personality,” Mueller said, “so the fans could see he’s not just this gruff guy with one-sentence answers.”