Back in the day, the Cleveland Browns were football royalty, and the Pittsburgh Steelers were pissants.
The best thing you could say about the old Steelers was that at least they were a tough bunch: "Maybe they can't beat you, but they'll beat you up." The worst you could say varied, but it was said loudly and frequently in Pittsburgh taverns on Sunday afternoons during autumn. Pittsburgh had been in the NFL since 1933. The team had nearly gone under during the war-- not once, but twice. In 1943 they'd had to combine forces with the cross-state Philadelphia Eagles to field a squad unaffectionately known as the "Steagles." The following year they'd merged depleted rosters with the Chicago Cardinals; represented as "Card-Pitt" in the standings, they'd quickly become known as "Carpets" because the rest of the league walked all over them to the tune of an 0-10 record. And while other franchises had their own moments of embarrassment tucked away in the past, they also had conference titles and league championships by their name. The Pittsburgh Steelers, after 36 years in the league, had nothing.
And there to remind them, every year, were the Browns, and their legendary coach, and their proud fans, and their 24 consecutive winning seasons and eight league championships.
Cleveland dominated the All-American Football Conference the year the team and league were founded, and they continued to do so for the AAFC's entire four-year existence. Merged into the NFL in 1950, the Browns promptly won the league championship that year too, and over the next five seasons they won the Eastern Conference each year as well as two more NFL titles. They won another league championship in 1964, and added five more conference titles by 1969. Even when they didn't finish first, they contended. At the time of the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, the Cleveland Browns had never had a single losing season in their quarter-century of operation.
Who might have expected that all this was about to change? Perhaps only one man-- a burly, quiet, but immensely powerful and intelligent former Browns lineman hired to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969: Chuck Noll.
The fortunes of the two teams diverged almost precisely at the moment when Noll took over and the Super Bowl became synonymous with the league championship—the 1970 merger. Noll’s Steelers made the postseason for the first time in 1972, which was also the Browns’ last postseason appearance for eight years.
And so the reversal began. During those eight years the Steelers won four Super Bowls, Pittsburgh became known as the “City of Champions,” and Cleveland Browns fans slowly and grudgingly became used to a completely new experience—losing on a regular basis. How it must have galled those raised on the Cleveland postseason perennials of the 1950s and 1960s to endure seven straight years of finishing third or fourth in a four-team division, not to mention records of 3-11, 4-10, and 6-8. Even when the 1976 team won 9 games, they couldn’t make the playoffs. In that first Cleveland postseason drought, they won a total of 46 games, while the Steelers won 77—and those four Super Bowls.
Things got better in the 1980s, somewhat. With Sam Rutigliano and Marty Schottenheimer coaching the team, Cleveland made the playoffs seven out of ten years, including five in a row from 1985-1989. During those years, the Steelers languished at or near the bottom of the division. But those years were also when the Browns developed their “snakebit” reputation—“The Drive” in 1986, “The Fumble” in 1987, for example. By contrast, Steelers fans could still look back on “The Immaculate Reception” and “John Swearingen’s Call” as evidence their championship team was favored by the football gods.
The 1970s had been bad for the Browns. But the 1990s ushered in a veritable apocalypse of badness. In the midst of postseason droughts that lasted four, seven, and then seventeen seasons, Art Modell kidnapped the team and took it to Baltimore, the franchise sat in limbo for three years, and the only coach to lead Cleveland to a playoff win in nearly 30 years—Bill Belichick in 1994—went on to unimaginable glory in New England. And—by the way—the Pittsburgh Steelers became the first team to win six Super Bowls during this time. The other team to win six? Belichick’s Patriots, of course.
It’s sad but generally true that one-sided rivalries tend to lose their bite over time. Sure, “I’m takin’ da Brahns to da Supa Bowl,” remains a running (sorry about that) joke in Steeltown lavatories, but lately it’s the Baltimore Ravens that have become Pittsburgh’s main rival. Considering the Ravens were built from the ashes of the Cleveland Browns, it was yet another Rodney Dangerfield moment for the loyal fans in the city on the lake.
So as the 2020 Cleveland Browns ran all over Heinz Field last night, scoring four touchdowns in eight minutes and 48 points overall to knock the despised Steelers completely sideways and out of the playoffs, we can’t help but wonder if this presages a second turn of the wheel in one of the NFL’s greatest rivalries.
