STEVE LOVE

Author,  Award-Winning Journalist and Proud Oklahoman

Cleveland Browns.com Photo

Bullheaded tough-guy Marty Schottenheimer, the Cleveland Browns best head coach in the past 40 years, Old Browns or New, died this week in Charlotte, North Carolina, after suffering since 2014 from Alzheimer’s. He also was one of the winningest coaches in the National Football League, and he cried on occasion, from the ordinary to special.

I liked him for that. I admire tough guys who can be sentimental enough to tear up. Old men cry. I know. I’m old. He was 77 when he died. But Marty also cried when he was young and strong and new head coach. I was a new columnist to the Akron Beacon Journal when Marty got his first head coaching job by being bullheaded, and 4½ years later I had to abandon my laid-up wife to fend for herself after foot surgery when Marty, true to himself and form, provoked his firing in the waning days of 1988. Want to guess the cause? He was being bullheaded again—and I think right was on his side—by standing up to owner Art Modell who was demanding that Schottenheimer make staff changes, including reassigning his brother, Kurt, the special teams coach.

Everyone believes, and not without reason, that when Marty mentioned that “there’s a gleam,” as he often did to players, media, and probably people he met in the grocery store, that he was referring the shine coming off the Lombardi Trophy under the Super Bowl lights. He wanted to win that trophy in the worst way. He never let his players forget it and tried to infuse them with gleam beam and his own dedication and drive.

What I thought of, though, when he brought up the gleam, was not that its light reflected off the highly polished Lombardi Trophy but instead it was the one that his eyes emitted when they welled up with tears and began to glisten. They could come when he talked about the Browns playing for that ultimate trophy or, seemingly, from nowhere. Still, it is fitting that Marty Schottenheimer would die in the days just after another Super Bowl.

It is the one place he never reached, and, of course, the Browns haven’t, either. My hope is that players and others associated with the New Browns will think of Marty if one day they not only reach the Super Bowl but win it. Marty came close, very close.

Not close enough, though, to satisfy Art Modell. After a heartbreaking playoff loss to the Houston Oilers, Tony Grossi, then Browns writer for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, followed up with the owner, probably expecting the type of knee-jerk reaction for which Modell was notorious. Schottenheimer should have seen it coming, too. He had been named coach in the middle of the 1984 season, replacing Sam Rutigliano, for whom he had coordinated the defense for a team that had struggled to a 1-7 half-season record.

Modell wanted to name Marty interim coach. Marty was having none of it. He said no thank you to the interim qualifier, because to a tough guy this sounded as if he were to be a substitute teacher and he realized he would not have the class’s—team’s—respect. He shot back at the guy who was dangling under his nose at least a chance at the brass ring. Nope, Marty told Modell. Three years. A real contract that both he and the players could respect and understand. This proved the pattern of the relationship.

Conflict was not limited to coach and owner. Coach and quarterback had their special internecine battles. Schottenheimer kept the handcuffs on Bernie Kosar, the last great quarterback of the Old Browns, during his first season in 1985. Then after Lindy Infante showed up in ’86 and opened the offense to take greater advantage of Kosar’s unique skill—it wasn’t running—it was as if the games were suddenly being played in a spring meadow. Kosar and Infante were ham-and-eggs, peanut butter-and-jelly. They just went together. They did so well, in fact, Infante after two seasons became head coach at Green Bay and learned to miss Kosar, who suddenly had the more conservative, run-oriented Marty Schottenheimer calling the plays for the first time in his 15-year career.

That worked about as well as fingernails on a chalk board, though Marty did have his moments not the least of which was, ironically, 1988. He nursed the team to a division title using five quarterbacks, because of injuries. There were just not enough of them to satisfy Modell. As he had when the younger Kosar sought a new offensive coordinator, Modell forced the change to Infante. This time the change involved Marty directly.

Typical of how things happened with the Browns, Modell blurted out to Grossi his intentions, as Grossi described this week on his website TheLandonDemand.com. He hadn’t informed Schottenheimer directly. When Marty read this in the newspaper—great for the writer, bad for the coach—he refused General Manager Ernie Accorsi’s pleas for a cooling off period and challenged Modell in his inner sanctum. Thirty minutes later he was the Browns former coach and would have regrets for years, as he told Grossi.

During a 2016 phone conversation, Schottenheimer said: It was the dumbest thing I ever did. I mean, what the hell, leaving there? God only knows I might still be there. . . . Of all the decisions I made in my life, it’s the one I regret the most.”

Marty loved Cleveland but he knew he would coach again. As I wrote in 1988, he told us: “I’d like to think I would be able to find another opportunity in coaching.” Before Modell’s door hit in the ass, he had a job as Kansas City Chiefs coach, and was on his way to 200 regular-season victories, eighth most all-time among NFL coaches.

Though he is the NFL’s winningest coach without a league championship—he can thank Denver and John Elway for that—he also has the worst postseason record (5-13) among coaches with more than 10 appearances. If close only counts in horseshoes, the rules should be revised to include judgment of Marty Schottenheimer as a coach.

I did not always agree with his coaching but to think that anyone would remember him as anything less than a great coach makes me want to cry. I think I will go do that now.