Browns to honor Legends Monday

10.07.2008

It seems fitting that this year's Cleveland Browns Legends class will be honored at halftime of a game against a New York team - especially against the defending Super Bowl champion Giants -- on a Monday night in Cleveland.

For the quartet of inductees -- cornerback Warren Lahr, representing the 1940s/50s era, defensive end Paul Wiggin (1960s), defensive tackle Walter Johnson (1970s) and running back/returner Eric Metcalf (1980s/90s) -- all have strong ties to either the Giants or Monday Night Football. And one Legend, Johnson, also has ties to the team that shares Giants Stadium with the Giants, the New York Jets.

Lahr, who passed away in 1969 at the way-too-young age of 45, played with the Browns from 1948-59, during their great early days. He was a starter from the moment he came to the Browns and, as a rookie, was a member of the undefeated 1948 team that won the All-America Football Conference championship for the third straight year. That club, and those from 1947 and '49, will also be honored by the Browns later this season.

He was on that 1949 AAFC championship club, and on NFL title teams in 1950, '54 and '55. The 1951, '52, '53 and '57 Browns also played in the NFL Championship Game but lost.

Lahr was a key member of great defenses that, because of the plethora of star players on offense, never got their due. He is second on the Browns in career interceptions with 40, including eight in 1950.

A native of West Wyoming, Pa., he first came to Cleveland while playing at Case Western Reserve University. He was taken in the 30th round of the 1947 NFL Draft by Pittsburgh but never played for the Steelers, instead going to the Browns a year later.

Once the Browns entered the NFL in 1950, their arch rivals became the Giants. Every game between the two for a decade and a half really meant something. With the exception of one year, either the Browns or Giants won the American/Eastern Conference title and advanced to the NFL Championship Game. Only in 1960, when the Philadelphia Eagles captured not only the East but the league crown as well, was the party interrupted.

In 1950, the Browns blew through the entire conference except for one team, the Giants. New York beat them twice, 6-0 and 17-13, stifling the prolific Cleveland offense. As a result, the teams finished tied for first place in the conference at 10-2, necessitating a special playoff game at Cleveland. In a brutally physical game under brutally cold conditions, the Browns won 8-3.

After retiring, Lahr also worked as the color analyst for the last five years of the Browns Television Network before the major networks took over the telecasts of NFL games in 1968. One of the last games he worked in that final season on TV of 1967 was against the Giants.

Wiggin also knows all about playing against the Giants after having been with the Browns for 11 seasons (1957-67), in two of which he went to the Pro Bowl. The first game of his rookie season of 1957 was against the Giants, who had broken the Browns' six-year stranglehold on the conference title in 1956 and then went on to claim the NFL crown as well. Cleveland won 6-3 and then also ended the season with a close victory over the Giants, 34-28, using those as a catapult to a 9-2-1 record and the Eastern championship.

In 1958, the Browns were on the losing end of two close games with the Giants, including the famous 13-10 decision in the finale at Yankee Stadium that was won when Pat Summerall -- yes, that Pat Summerall, the former longtime TV play-by-play announcer of NFL games -- hit a long field goal in a snowstorm late in the fourth quarter. That forced a replay of 1950, with the teams tied again atop the East, this time at 9-3, and having a playoff. The Giants got revenge for the loss eight years earlier by gaining a 10-0 triumph in that one.

Then in 1964, the year the Browns last won the NFL championship, they clinched the Eastern title by going to Yankee Stadium and, with Wiggin helping to lead the way defensively, routing the defending conference champion Giants 52-20 in the regular-season finale. Coupled with a 42-20 win earlier in the year in Cleveland, the Browns not only swept the Giants for the first time since Wiggin's rookie year, but also had their two most lopsided triumphs over their rivals in one season.

A native of Modesto, Cal., Wiggin first played at Modesto Junior College before going on to Stanford and then to the Browns as a sixth-round "futures" choice in the 1956 NFL Draft.

He was so good at Stanford, in fact, that he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005. Also in that class was linebacker Jim Houston, who played behind Wiggin on the Cleveland defense for five seasons and was inducted as a Browns Legend in 2006.

After his retirement as a player, Wiggin served as head coach at Stanford and with the Kansas City Chiefs. Ironically, his last game with the Chiefs was in 1977 against the Browns in Cleveland.

Now 73, Wiggin, a longtime personnel man with the Minnesota Vikings, still works for that club as a consultant.

By the time Johnson, a native of Cincinnati, came to the Browns in 1965 as a second-round draft choice out of tiny Los Angeles State, where he had transferred from New Mexico State, the Giants were in a free fall. All of their star players seemed to get old all at the same time, and the franchise began a nearly two-decade period in which it never made the playoffs.

Instead, Johnson's connections with the Giants contest is that he played in the first Monday Night Football game, held Sept. 21, 1970 at Cleveland Stadium when the Browns beat the Jets 31-21.

Nobody knew at the time if playing pro football on a Monday night and televising it nationally would work, but as we know now, it did. It was -- and has been -- a resounding success right, and it happened right from the get-go, especially in Cleveland, as a Browns record home crowd -- still -- of 85,703 watched that first game.

Johnson, who went to the Pro Bowl three straight seasons in the late 1960s, is considered one of the best defensive tackles in Browns history. When he and fellow Browns Legend Jerry Sherk played together in the early 1970s, they were rated as one of the top tackle tandems in the game.

Sherk was a rookie in 1970, so in that season opener against the Jets, he was playing his first game. As a result, the Jets double-teamed the already accomplished Johnson and went right at Sherk to try to exploit his inexperience.

Johnson, in fact, played in the Browns' first five Monday Night Football games, three of which they won.

After his retirement, Johnson remained in the Cleveland area and became a devoted Browns fan. His heart got broken when the original franchise left following the 1995 season, and he was looking forward to the re-born franchise's debut in 1999. Unfortunately, he died that year at 56, about three weeks before that first training camp opened.

Johnson's grandson plays for Hampton University at left defensive tackle, the same position his grandfather manned for the Browns. As a tribute, he also wears Johnson's old number, 71.

Metcalf, now 40 and living back in his native Seattle, played for the Browns from 1989-94.

A first-round draft pick of the Browns -- No. 13 overall -- in 1989 out of Texas, the hope was that he could be as good as his father, Terry Metcalf, was as a star running back for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1970s. As it turned out, he was even better -- much better, in fact.

Metcalf excelled as both a runner and receiver out of the backfield -- he is 10th on the Browns in career rushing yards with 2,229 and eighth in receptions (297). However, it was as a returner where the shifty, lightning-quick, 5-10, 188-pounder really stood out. In fact, he's one of the best returners in NFL history.

Twice with the Browns, the two-time Pro Bowler led the league in punt returns for TDs, and once he topped it in kickoff returns for scores. He returned two punts for TDs in the same game against Pittsburgh in 1993, causing Steelers head coach Bill Cowher to follow his special teams coach the next day.

After Metcalf left the Browns, he completed his 13-year career by playing a total of seven seasons for the Atlanta Falcons, Arizona Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, Washington Redskins, San Diego Chargers and Carolina Panthers.

Metcalf's unique ability was showcased for the first time in the third game of his rookie season of 1989, a Monday nighter at Cincinnati. The Browns lost 21-14 to the defending AFC champion Bengals, but when the night was over, fans weren't talking about that as much as they were about Metcalf.

The conversation came as a result of the five-yard TD pass he caught from quarterback Bernie Kosar early in the second quarter. Once he took the pass in the flat, he put two incredible moves on cornerback Eric Thomas to glide into the end zone. Time and time again, ABC, which was televising the game, showed the play in super slow-motion, as if the members of the network crew couldn't believe what they had seen.

A month later in a MNF home game against the Chicago Bears, Metcalf had the first two-TD game of his career, one coming on a pass and the other on a run, in a 27-7 victory.

The honoring of the four new Legends on Monday night will be enhanced by fact the Browns will be wearing their "throwback" uniforms that they donned from 1957-59, when the team's rivalry with the Giants was really raging. Actually, the only real change will be on the helmet, where the two brown stripes down the middle have been removed, leaving only a single white one. In addition, the players' jersey numbers appear on both sides of their helmets.

And likewise, the Giants will be dressed in the uniforms they sported beginning in 1961, and went back to in 2000.

So it will be an old-time game in the truest sense. Wiggin won't have any trouble recognizing the uniforms of both teams. Neither would have Lahr.

Also, Metcalf will feel right at home on Monday Night Football, and Johnson would have, too.