[Editor’s Note: Blog copy editor cooked Thanksgiving dinner instead of editing this post. Mistakes are the writer’s.]

This may be a Thanksgiving 2020 leftover from a thankless year but it provides at least a slender ray of hope that sanity could prevail: The Pro Football Hall of Fame is once again considering Old Browns linebacker Clay Matthews Jr. for a bust.

Have no illusion that it will come to pass regardless of how well deserved. I don’t. It would be the upset of all upsets if Matthews joins brother Bruce, incomparable offensive linemen for the Houston Oilers, in the Hall of Fame bust room. This isn’t 2020, so to speak. The ballot box is stuffed with first-year-eligible greats. Only Donald Trump, former pro football team (USFL) owner who screwed that up, too, would contest the two sure winners—quarterback Peyton Manning and defensive back Charles Woodson. Wide receiver Calvin Johnson could be a third but his career was abbreviated so selectors might make him hold his water.

Whether two or three first-year-eligibles, it leaves little space for Matthews. Being fitted for a Gold Jacket should be enough, but selectors can offer a 21-gun salute with Ballot One choice. In any case, no more than five of the 25 semifinalists will be in the class.

This year of from hell had a heavenly beginning for those who love and appreciate old—and sometimes not so old—football players. To celebrate 1920, the 100^th anniversary of the NFL’s birth—the year the Akron Pros won the championship—the Hall of Fame expanded the size of its 2020 Senior Centennial class to include not one but 10 former greats. Unfortunately, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the induction was postponed to 2021. The spotlight on the dual classes will be so bright—if also diluted—that celebrants should wear shades even to nighttime events.

Adding to the splendor of the sure-fire election of first-year-eligibles Manning and Woodson is an impressive group of semifinalists, not the least of which is Matthews. His team—actually, the reincarnation of this team—wisely chose not to wait for the Hall of Fame confirmation to bestow on Matthews the highest honor at its disposal—the Browns Ring of Honor. In 2019 he joined the Ring, the only one without a Gold Jacket. It’s time that changed.

Sixteen former Browns are in the Hall of Fame, with a 17^th, receiver Mac Speedie, to join his brethren posthumously when the delayed 2020 induction is held. If there is any justice, Clay Matthews will be present, as it feels he always was for the Browns. The durable Matthews played 19 seasons, 16 in Cleveland. His numbers would rattle the rafters of football’s heaven: 1,561 tackles, third most in NFL history; 278 games, 17^thmost; 69.5 sacks; 16 interceptions; 11 starts in the playoffs; five times a HOF semifinalist, though he is outgunned in this regard by fellow semifinalists safety John Lynch (9), special teamer/receiver Steve Tasker (8), receiver Torry Holt (7), tackle Tony Boselli (7), and guard Alan Faneca (6).

When the Browns began to win big and go to the playoffs—including three trips to the AFC Championship Game in four years—the honors began to flow to the player whom other Browns, who had to face him daily in practice and coached him, respected beyond all others. Coach Bud Carson, whose head-coaching career came late and lasted too short of time, couldn’t say enough about Matthews, especially in his high-water 1989 season. Carson, considered one of the NFL’s defensive coordinators, singled out Matthews as the team’s most deserving Pro Bowl choice, one of his four to go along with three All-Pro selections.

Carson had asked Matthews, drafted in the first round in in 1978 out of Southern Cal by coach/vice president Sam Rutigliano, to move to standup linebacker and become as much a disruptive force against the run and he had been against as the pass for Coach Marty Schottenheimer. Smart and tough as nails, Matthews stopped plays sideline to sideline.

Browns radio analyst Doug Dieken, who made his own name at offensive tackle, told former Browns beat writer Ed Meyer when he wrote about Matthews in 2018, that Matthews was “just the complete linebacker. . . . he could do everything. He could rush the passer. He could play the run. You couldn’t knock him off his feet. You never saw him on the ground, and he was as smart as could be.” So was Dieken.

Dieken hated trying to block Matthews, and he knew what to expect. Imagine how opponents who did not know Matthews’ tricks and tenacity felt. And, he was one of the nice guys to us writers. He used his smarts to explain to us what we did not understand, and he did not act as if he were doing us a favor. He thought we were doing him one. Retired Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston—The Boy—ranked Matthews his “favorite Browns player to cover” when he learned of his fifth turn as a Hall of Fame semifinalist “Clay,” Livingston explained on Facebook, “was a little eccentric.” Like The Boy himself.

If Matthews stood out on the field so did his car in the Browns parking lot. He drove a pauper’s beater and proudly displayed it alongside the more luxury rides of lesser princes of his game. Never, though, was Matthews more eccentric than when he made a big play and decided his team would benefit if he shared it with others. He first did this in 1987 when in Cincinnati he anticipated a Bengals pass and intercepted Boomer Esiason at the Browns’ 4-yard line. His return went well for the first 36 yards but then he found himself trapped in traffic and looked to pitch the ball to someone faster. The only Brown nearby was 35-year-old Carl Hairston. So Matthews lateraled the ball to him. “I felt like a little kid,” Big Daddy Hairston said. “Like somebody had given me a lollipop.”

Forty slow yards later, Hairston looked more like a used all-day sucker when he was knocked out of bounds at the Bengals’ 20-yard-line. Still, it was a memorable play and ended up on the Browns’ season highlight reel. “When I came off the field,” Matthews said, “I was kind of expecting everyone to say ‘Great play, great play.’” But they didn’t. “Everyone was laughing too hard to say anything,” Matthews explained.

That bit of razzle-dazzle was nothing. Two seasons later, Matthews, older and wiser(?), did it again. Only grit and good fortune prevented this play from ending up on the list of Cleveland’s most infamous—The Drive, The Fumble . . . The Pitch. Only a 58-yard drive for the AFC Central-Division winning TD with 39 seconds remaining prevented Matthews from his own lasting moment of infamy.

As I watched from the pressbox in the old Houston Astrodome I nearly spit a soft drink all over my computer when Matthews, scooped-up Warren Moon fumble in hand, tried to pitch the ball to another big guy, Chris Pike. Art Modell, Browns owner, later told Matthews: “I had to call my cardiologist and tell him I’d be coming in tomorrow.”

Matthews had hardly started his return before an Oiler was dangling from him. He thought of how he had gotten the ball to Big Daddy after an interception. So he pitched to Pike—and the ball sailed over Pike’s way-up-there head (6 feet, 8 inches). Horror stricken, Matthews scrambled for the ball but Houston’s Ernest Givens got there first and one play later Houston scored to take the lead.

“When Clay lateraled,” Coach Bud Carson said, “I thought it (a Cleveland victory) was not meant to be.”

“It probably was a little silly,” admitted Matthews. And unfathomable. The most experienced and best player on the field made a mistake that might have ended his team’s season and besmirched his Hall of Fame credentials.

“My experience,” Matthews pointed out, “is in tackling people, rushing the quarterback, and taking people on at the line. With the ball, I’m not very experienced.” And the previous lateral to Big Daddy Hairston had gone well enough. In the end, thanks to the running of Kevin Mack, who had come back from his own troubles (jail time for cocaine possession and then a knee injury), Matthews was off a very sharp hook: “I was deeply relieved when Kevin scored.”

Linebackers do not count for as much in today’s NFL as Matthews did. Coaches and personnel experts value pass rushers who quash quarterbacks and defensive backs who are as swift as receivers and can hit them and take the ball away. Hall of Fame selectors can strike a blow for an old-style linebacker by advancing Matthews to the list of 15 modern-era finalists and then on into the Hall of Fame where he belongs.

Matthews could run, hit, and tackle—tackle in the old sense of the word. He hit the man with the ball but didn’t leave to chance that the hit would bring him down. He wrapped him up and took him to the ground, sometimes wresting the ball away as well. Sure, Matthews did a couple of crazy things with the ball after he got it, but I miss both the way he played the game and the position the way he played it. “I played to win,” he said.

Did he ever.