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Otto Graham (14) scores on a 1-yard run during the Browns' 38-14 win over the Rams in the 1955 NFL championship game at Los Angeles. It was Graham's last game before retiring.

(Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio --

A countdown of the top 100 players in Cleveland Browns history. Players must have spent at least four seasons with the Browns. The ranking is based only on players' careers with the Browns.

No. 1,

, quarterback, 1946-55

Browns Top 100 so far

No. 1, Otto Graham

No. 2, Jim Brown

No. 3, Lou Groza

No. 4, Bill Willis

No. 5, Gene Hickerson

No. 6, Marion Motley

No. 7, Dante Lavelli

No. 8, Dick Schafrath

No. 9, Leroy Kelly

No. 10, Ozzie Newsome

No. 11, Mac Speedie

No. 12, Len Ford

No. 13, Mike McCormack

No. 14, Bob Gain

No. 15, Gary Collins

No. 16, Clay Matthews

No. 17, Hanford Dixon

No. 18, Frank Minnifield

No. 19, Paul Warfield

No. 20, Frank Gatski

No. 21, Walt Michaels

No. 22, Jim Ray Smith

No. 23, Frank Ryan (videos)

No. 24, Michael Dean Perry

No. 25, Bernie Kosar

No. 26, Joe Thomas

No. 27, Jerry Sherk

No. 28, Jim Houston

No. 29, Warren Lahr

No. 30, Greg Pruitt

No. 31, Bill Glass

No. 32, Brian Sipe

No. 33, Ray Renfro

No. 34, Walter Johnson

No. 35, Don Colo

No. 36, Cody Risien

No. 37, Doug Dieken

No. 38, Mike Pruitt

No. 39, Clarence Scott

No. 40, Galen Fiss (videos)

No. 41, Bernie Parrish

No. 42, Paul Wiggin

No. 43, Ernie Green

No. 44, Kenny Konz

No. 45, Bob Golic

No. 46, Abe Gibron

No. 47, Thom Darden

No. 48, Bobby Mitchell

No. 49, Milt Morin

No. 50, Milt Plum

No. 51, Don Paul

No. 52, Bill Nelsen

No. 53, Joe DeLamielleure

No. 54, Chip Banks

No. 55, Lou Rymkus

No. 56, Vince Costello

No. 57, Tommy James

No. 58, Kevin Mack

No. 59, Dub Jones

No. 60, Tom DeLeone

No. 61, John Wooten

No. 62, Webster Slaughter

No. 63, Erich Barnes

No. 64, John Morrow

No. 65, Earnest Byner

No. 66, Johnny Brewer

No. 67, Eric Metcalf

No. 68, Darrel 'Pete' Brewster

No. 69, Mike Johnson

No. 70, Jack Gregory

No. 71, Carl 'Big Daddy' Hairston

No. 72, Don Cockroft

No. 73, Dan Fike

No. 74, Lin Houston

No. 75, Cliff Lewis

No. 76, Tony Adamle

No. 77, Monte Clark

No. 78, Horace Gillom

No. 79, Reggie Rucker

No. 80, Tommy Thompson

No. 81, Dave Logan

No. 82, Eric Turner

No. 83, Ross Fichtner

No. 84, Rob Burnett

No. 85, Tony Jones

No. 86, John Demarie

No. 87, Felix Wright

No. 88, Reggie Langhorne

No. 89, Mike Howell

No. 90, Lou Saban

No. 91, Brian Brennan

No. 92, Josh Cribbs (videos)

No. 93, John Kissell

No. 94, Dick Ambrose

No. 95, Ernie Kellermann

No. 96, Mike Baab

No. 97, Charlie Hall

No. 98, Ben Davis

No. 99, Robert E. Jackson

No. 100 (tie), Phil Dawson

No. 100 (tie), Jim Kanicki

The most meaningful superlative for a quarterback is "winner."

Quarterback Otto Graham and the Browns were the biggest winners of their era. Graham played 10 years and the Browns were in the championship game in every one of them, winning seven.

Yet it would seriously short-change Graham to remember him just for winning, as odd as that might sound. He didn't just "manage" the game trying to keep his team from losing. He owned the game. He was a remarkable and versatile athlete, one who would have excelled at a variety of positions in any era.

The countdown of the top 100 players in Browns history concluded with a

, Otto Graham or Jim Brown.

The few shaky, grainy black-and-white videos from Graham's day fail to capture his excellence. Maybe that's why an occasional rankings show on a sports or football cable network downplay his accomplishments. Contrarily, there have been even in recent years the pundits who've listed Graham as the game's best-ever quarterback: a strong-armed accurate passer who could hit receivers on any route even against the swirling Lake Erie winds; a dangerous runner and a tough, savvy leader; a three-time NFL MVP in his last five years and a nine-time first-team all-league selection in his 10 seasons.

There's little film to be found of the NFL championship games the Browns won in 1950 (30-28 over the Los Angeles Rams in Cleveland), 1954 (56-10 over the Detroit Lions in Cleveland) and 1955 (38-14 over the Rams in Los Angeles).

In those three games, Graham completed 45 of 70 passes (64.3 percent) for 670 yards and nine touchdowns. That's 14.9 yards per completion and 9.4 yards per attempt. Also in those games, Graham ran for 147 yards and five touchdowns in 30 carries. That's 4.9 yards per carry, and it may have been better than that. In those days, quarterbacks were often charged with lost rushing yards when they had actually been sacked.

Despite the lack of film from Graham's time and a common theme that his career is ancient history, Graham was a virtual contemporary of some players who are considered modern-era. Graham retired at the end of the 1955 season. The Browns' Jim Brown, commonly and deservedly referred to as the best running back ever, began his NFL career in 1957. NFL rosters included 33 players in each of those years. Seventeen Browns played at least one year with Graham and at least one with Brown -- many of them teammates of each for multiple years.

Graham turned 25 during his rookie season but had turned just 34 when he retired. He had just led the Browns to another title in his final year, had led the league in passer rating and was the NFL Most Valuable Player for the third time in a five-year stretch. The best quarterbacks often play into their late 30s. Graham probably had at least a couple very good seasons left. How about if he and Jim Brown had played together? It may have never happened even if Graham had stuck around.

The Browns went 5-7 in 1956, their first season without Graham. They almost certainly would have won more games had he still been at QB and thus would have picked later in the first round of the 1957 draft. As it was, they picked sixth and took Syracuse running back Brown. It's been well-documented that coach Paul Brown wanted to pick Len Dawson at No. 6, but the Pittsburgh Steelers tabbed him one pick ahead of the Browns' turn. Paul Brown had hoped Dawson could turn into a reasonable replacement for Graham. Dawson eventually went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Kansas City Chiefs after he spent three years in Pittsburgh and two in Cleveland -- all as a backup -- after the Browns acquired him in a trade with the Steelers.

Graham had actually delayed by a year the predicament the Browns would have in trying to replace him. He retired after the 1954 championship season but decided to return for one more year -- and another title -- shortly before the 1955 campaign began. He was persuaded to come back by Paul Brown as Cleveland's QBs struggled in training camp.

Graham flourished during an era when the rules favored defensive backs, when pass defenders were allowed to make much more contact with receivers at any time along the route than they are now allowed to. It was no simple matter to establish an efficient passing attack. Ironically, Graham was also a fine defensive back in his early Browns seasons.

Years after Graham retired, NFL coaches gradually adopted more cautious offensive approaches. The passer rating system was devised in recent years, and the mathematics of it favor the quarterbacks who have high completion and low interception percentages because, in part, most passes they throw have minimal risk. The system favors the quarterback whose team, in a hypothetical situation, gets the football on its own 10-yard-line with three minutes to go and trailing by 10 points. The quarterback completes 7 of 9 passes for 62 yards and his passer rating gets a boost, but the game ends with his team at the opponents' 28 and still losing by 10 points.

Graham was not that kind of careful, boring quarterback. His 9.0 yards per pass attempt over the course of his career ranks first all-time. That includes his four seasons in the All-America Football Conference and his six in the NFL. If the category is to include NFL play only, Graham is still first all-time with 8.63 yards per pass attempt.

Yet despite his daring approach, Graham's career passer rating of 86.6 ranks 16th all-time. The 86.6 is the highest ever for any quarterback who began his pro career before 1979. If you subtract his AAFC seasons, Graham's passer rating is roughly at 80. Even that would be the highest in NFL history for any quarterback who retired before 1971.

Thus, even the flawed passer rating system can't diminish Graham's greatness. Maybe that system should be junked anyway. It has, for instance, Chad Pennington, Daunte Culpepper and Jeff Garcia ranked as, respectively, the 13th, 14th and 15th most effective passers ever. The Browns' current backup quarterback, Jason Campbell, ranks 40th: 12 spots ahead of Warren Moon; 15 ahead of Bart Starr; 23 ahead of John Elway; 35 ahead of Johnny Unitas; 112 ahead of Terry Bradshaw; 149 ahead of Joe Namath.

Graham's 10 seasons were simultaneous with the first 10 years in Browns history. Getting to the championship game every year, the Browns were 4-0 in AAFC title contests and 3-3 in NFL championship games. Counting the two division playoff games they won, they were 9-3 in postseason play: 5-0 in the AAFC, 4-3 in the NFL. Cleveland won 105 regular season games, lost 17 and tied four. That included records of 47-4-3 in the AAFC and 58-13-1 in the NFL.

Graham, who never missed a game, was a first-team all-league selection in nine of his ten seasons and second-team in the other season. He made the Pro Bowl team in the first five of his six NFL years, not making it only in his final year, 1955 -- even though he won his third NFL Most Valuable Player award that year. (The AAFC that Graham and the Browns played in during their first four seasons didn't have a Pro Bowl-type game) He was also MVP in 1951 and 1953. Graham was the AAFC MVP in 1947 and shared the award with 49ers quarterback Frankie Albert in 1948, when the Browns went 14-0 and then clobbered the Buffalo Bills, 49-7, in the championship game at Cleveland. (The AAFC played 14-game schedules from 1946-48 and then a 12-game slate in 1949. NFL teams played 12 regular season games through Graham's career)

The Browns and Graham were supposed to get their comeuppance once the AAFC folded and they -- along with the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts -- were brought into the NFL. The Browns played their first NFL regular season game on Saturday night, Sept. 16, 1950 against the two-time defending champion Eagles in Philadelphia. Cleveland stunned the favored Eagles, 35-10. Graham completed 21 of 38 passes for 346 yards. He threw touchdown passes of 59 yards to Dub Jones, 26 yards to Dante Lavelli and 13 yards to Mac Speedie, then ran one yard for a score to put the Browns up, 28-3, in the fourth quarter.

The dominating win set the tone for the 1950 Browns. They finished in a first-place divisional tie with the New York Giants, forcing a playoff game at Cleveland Stadium. With the game tied, 3-3, Graham led a late fourth quarter drive by running three times for 36 yards, setting up Lou Groza's 28-yard field goal and a 6-3 Browns lead with 58 seconds left. Cleveland clinched the 8-3 win with a safety.

In the Browns' 30-28 championship game win over the Los Angeles Rams the next week in Cleveland, Graham completed 22 of 33 passes for 298 yards and four touchdowns and rushed for 99 yards on 12 carries. The Browns trailed, 28-27, when they got the ball on their own 32 with 1:50 left. Graham completed three passes for 43 yards and had a 14-yard run. The plays set up Groza's game-winning 16-yard field goal with 28 seconds to go.

During Cleveland's championship game routs of the Lions, 56-10, in 1954 in Cleveland and of the Rams, 38-14, in 1955 in Los Angeles -- Graham's final game before his retirement -- he completed 23 of 37 passes for 372 yards and five touchdowns and ran for five touchdowns himself.

In 12 postseason games including 10 championship games, Graham completed 159 of 300 passes for 2,101 yards, 14 touchdowns and 17 interceptions. The 53 percent completion rate and 5.7 percent interception rate were excellent for the era.

Quarterback sacks were often counted as rushing attempts during much of Graham's career, so it's not possible to compile his true rushing totals. (In fact, ignore any regular season rushing statistics you see on Graham for that reason) However, in his last eight postseason games, he was credited with 354 yards running on 64 carries (5.5 yards per carry). He totaled six rushing touchdowns. Graham intercepted a pass in the Browns' 14-9 win over the football New York Yankees in the 1946 AAFC championship game in Cleveland. Also in postseason play, he returned five punts for 20 yards and one kickoff for 46 yards.

Besides retiring as pro football's all-time leader with 9.0 yards per pass attempt (a record he still holds), Graham was the all-time leader in yards passing (23,584) at the time of his retirement. At that time, he had thrown the lowest percentage (5.1) of interceptions ever and his 55.8 completion percentage was the second-best ever. He was second in touchdown passes (174).

Graham led the league in passing yards in five different seasons. He was also a league leader in passer rating (four years), completion percentage (four years), yards per completion (four years), touchdown passes (three years), yards per pass attempt (three years), lowest percentage of interceptions (three years) and highest percentage of touchdown passes (two years).

During the three regular seasons (1946-48) when he also played defensive back, Graham intercepted seven passes and returned them 102 yards, including one for 37 yards and a touchdown. He had 23 punt returns for 262 yards, an 11.4-yard return average. Graham scored 46 touchdowns in regular season games: 44 by running with the ball, one on the interception return and another on a fumble recovery.

A sidelight to Graham's career: During the Browns' 23-21 home win over the 49ers on Nov. 15, 1953, he had to leave the game with a severe gash on his chin. As he got stitched up, Browns personnel configured a plastic device to protect the injury. Graham returned to the game wearing a form of the equipment which would then be added to all helmets, the face mask.

Graham went to Northwestern on a basketball scholarship and was first-team All-America as a senior. He began playing football as a sophomore and also played baseball for the Wildcats. Graham led Northwestern to football wins over Ohio State in 1941 and 1943, both when Paul Brown was coaching the Buckeyes.

Graham enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II. Beginning in 1944 he went through pilot training programs in New York State and North Carolina.

Paul Brown was in the early stages of building the Browns' team that would play in the new AAFC when he signed Graham in 1945. Brown had been impressed with Graham's play against Ohio State. Graham had been taken by the Lions with the fourth pick in the first round of the 1944 NFL draft but didn't sign. As Graham waited for his pro football career to begin after agreeing to terms with the Browns, he played one year of pro basketball for the 1945-46 National Basketball League champion Rochester Royals. The NBL would in 1949 be absorbed into the Basketball Association of American to form the National Basketball Association.

Graham coached the Coast Guard Academy football team from 1959-65 and in 1974-75. The Coast Guard played a college schedule roughly equivalent to today's Division II programs. He also worked as the Academy's athletic director during both stints and after retiring as the football coach, continued as athletic director until he retired in 1984.

After his first stay with the Coast Guard, Graham was the Washington Redskins' head coach from 1966-68. Graham also coached the College All-Stars for years in the College All-Star Game that was played each summer in Chicago . He coached the team of college stars who had been seniors the previous season against the defending NFL champions. The 1964 champion Browns defeated Graham's all-stars, 24-16, on Aug. 6, 1965. Second-year Cleveland wide receiver Paul Warfield broke a collarbone during the game and missed most of the season.

Graham spent most of his retirement in Florida. He died on Dec. 17, 2003 at age 82.

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Video:

Otto Graham (60) completes a pass to Mac Speedie (58) and throws two touchdown passes to Dub Jones (86) during the Browns' 42-21 win over the Chicago Bears on Nov. 25, 1951, the game in which Jones scored six touchdowns:

Video:

From the 1955 Los Angeles Rams highlights film. About 6:50 in, highlights of the Browns' 38-14 win over the Rams in the 1955 championship game at Los Angeles. About 7:35 in, five straight plays by Browns' quarterback Otto Graham (14), playing his last game:

Video:

Otto Graham (60) is the Browns quarterback in highlights from the 1951 title game, which the Browns lost, 24-17, to the Rams in Los Angeles:

Video:

Footage on Otto Graham gives some indication of his abilities: