GETTING ALL JUMPY AFTER THE BIG LOSS IN MINNESOTA

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh in a series of stories about former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano as he turned 90 on July 1.

By STEVE KING

When it comes to tough regular-season losses in Browns history, this one might be an all-timer.

The Browns, with a chance to clinch a playoff spot, seemed to be in complete command and well on their way to doing just that when they built a 23-9 fourth-quarter lead over the host Minnesota Vikings st Metropolitan Stadium on Dec. 14, 1980 in the next-to-last game of the season.

But in the horror of all horrors, they totally collapsed from there, losing 28-23 on Tommy Kramer’s 46-yard “Hail Mary” touchdown pass to wide receiver Ahmad Rashad as time expired. The Browns had a chance to bat down the pass in the end zone, which was what they obviously needed to do to preserve the victory. but instead the ball ended up being tipped up into the air, allowing Rashad to sneak in from the side to catch it among the gaggle of Browns and Vikings.

How could this happen?

Yes, these Browns were the Kardiac Kids, for whom no lead was too big to blow and no deficit was too big to overcome, so crazy things could, and did, happen. But not like this. This was off-the-chart bizarre.

And oh, so costly.

The Browns fell to 10-5, and they would have to fight their way into the playoffs by winning the following week at Cincinnati. That would be much, much, much tougher than finishing the job in Minnesota should have been.

Ugh. A team – especially one as good as the Browns, and on the brink of the playoffs – can’t lose games like that. They simply can’t. But yet, the Browns inexplicably did.

Not surprisingly, then, the Browns’ plane ride back to Cleveland had all the cheer of a funeral parlor.

“Art’s lieutenants were all ready to jump (out of the plane),” Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano quipped about team owner Art Modell’s top people being in full-blown panic mode.

Rutigliano was not one of them.

Instead, he calmly told them, “Quit worrying. Everything’s going to fine.”

It better be, or Rutigliano might be the one ready to jump – or, worse yet, the one being pushed out of the side door of the plane.

Did Rutigliano know something that no one else did? Or was he just being his usual optimistic self?

Or – or – a little of both?

Perhaps the last one.