EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the sixth in a series of stories about former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano as he turned 90.
By STEVE KING
“The 12 Days of a Cleveland Browns Christmas” was a popular song as the holidays approached in that 1980 Kardiac Kids season. In a fun way, it put a yuletide spin on that fun team.
But it’s a well-known, iconic Christmas poem that, in reality, has the lines that tell the crux of the Browns’ most important win in 1980, the mid-season, 26-21 come-from-behind decision over the Green Bay Packers that saved their year. Without it, 1980 might have turned out completely different.
In Clement Moore’s “Twas The Night Before Christmas,” he writes, referring to St. Nicholas’s, or Santa Claus’s, arrival, “A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.” Later, regarding Santa’s departure from the house, there’s this line, “And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.”
A wink of his eye, and a nod. Yes, those are what rescued the Browns from disaster.
The Browns had started the season slowly, at 0-2, but were playing better and entered the game at 3-3. The Packers were bad, going nowhere at 2-3-1 and headed toward a 5-10-1 finish. So, then, this was a game the Browns had to win, especially considering that they had two games against the Pittsburgh Steelers and a Monday Night Football contest against the Chicago Bears in the next three weeks.
The Browns, after amassing a 10-0 halftime lead, did a typical Kardiac Kids thing and failed to put the Packers away, instead letting them go on top 21-13 in the fourth quarter. The Browns scored to make it 21-20 and then got the ball back for one last drive to see if they could win it.
After moving to the Green Bay 46 in the waning seconds, Browns quarterback Brian Sipe came to the line of scrimmage and looked to his far right to see 6-foot-4 wide receiver Dave Logan, and a good leaper from his basketball-playing days at the University of Colorado, lined up on the periphery against a 5-10 rookie cornerback who was going to have no help from the safeties.
It was a mismatch made in heaven, the likes of which Sipe couldn’t believe.
He turned to his left and then looked back to the right to make sure that the coverage hadn’t changed, and as a he did, he winked at Logan and nodded his head toward him as if to say, “Just take off and run straight the field andd I’ll lob the ball up to you. That guy isn’t big enough nor can he jump high enough to do anything to stop it.”
Logan understood. Sipe flung the ball toward him, he jumped up and caught it, the corner fell down and Logan raced into the end zone untouched for the deciding touchdown in a 26-21 win.
Sipe and Logan hugged each other in jubilant fashion on the sideline. They knew full well what had happened, that they had dodged a bullet and kept themselves alive in the postseason hunt.
But late in the season, no one on the Cleveland sideline was jumping. For joy or anything else.
