Fans leave the Dawg Pound area at Cleveland Browns Stadium after the Browns' 15-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday, Dec. 16, 2001, in Cleveland.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It was an innocent, brisk December afternoon. The Cleveland Browns needed a victory against the Jacksonville Jaguars to preserve their playoff hopes.

It was Dec. 16, 2001, Week 14 of the NFL season. The Browns entered at 6-6, likely in need of four straight wins to crash the postseason party. The Butch Davis era was well under way and, finally, the team flashed potential. The Jaguars arrived at the shores of Lake Erie with a 4-8 mark.

Tom Coughlin's squad carried a 9-0 lead into halftime. Cornerback Anthony Henry returned an interception 97 yards for a touchdown late in the third quarter -- the Browns established a franchise record with 33 picks in 2001 -- to narrow Cleveland's deficit. Mike Hollis converted a 37-yard field goal with 3:02 remaining to provide the Jaguars with a 15-10 lead.

What happened over the final minutes of the game lives on in infamy in Cleveland sports lore and in the annals of the NFL.

The following is an oral history of those tense, unforgettable moments, as detailed by players, reporters, referees and other stadium personnel. All quotes are from recent interviews.

Dennis Manoloff, Plain Dealer reporter: "Back in those days, writers could go down on the field for the last two minutes. I always used to take advantage of that, because I loved watching the NFL games up close."

Andre King, Browns receiver: "We were fighting for our playoff lives under Butch Davis."

The offense had been listless all afternoon. The running game -- anchored by Jamel White -- was non-existent. Quarterback Tim Couch entered the final drive with only 116 passing yards.

King ran the kickoff to Cleveland's 34. Couch completed passes to O.J. Santiago and Kevin Johnson, moving the ball to Jacksonville's 32. Eric Westmoreland sacked Couch. An incompletion followed.

Then, Couch connected with King to convert a third-and-12. A short pass to Quincy Morgan, a sack by Tony Brackens and another short pass to Johnson followed.

The Browns faced fourth-and-2 from Jacksonville's 12 with 1:08 to play. Couch dropped back and found Morgan, who clutched the football near his waist and appeared to take two steps before he was leveled by safety James Boyd. As Morgan fell to the grass, the ball wiggled free and bounced on the ground. Still, it was ruled a catch and the Browns were awarded a 3-yard gain and a first down.

Cleveland Browns' Quincy Morgan, left, bounces off the turf after catching a pass from Tim Couch for an apparent first down against Jacksonville's James Boyd, late in the fourth quarter Dec. 16, 2001, in Cleveland.

Scott Steenson, field judge: "I'm on the goal line, because Cleveland had the ball going in. The head linesman ruled a completed pass. I'm opposite the head linesman. I'm on the other side of the field."

Manoloff: "You could see it plain as day. I was probably 30 yards from it. You could see it was on his hip when he went down."

Kiwaukee Thomas, Jaguars cornerback: "It looked like he caught it."

King: "This thing was butchered from the get-go."

Steenson: "After the completion of the pass, they got up quickly to the line of scrimmage."

Morgan (81) has the ball slip out of his arms as he is hit by Jacksonville's Boyd.

King: "Quincy caught it and got the first down and hopped up, got set and Tim Couch spiked the ball. So it's second and goal at the 9 going in. We're getting ready to call a red zone play. We have three shots to win it."

Manoloff: "You didn't know which way it was going to go. They ruled it a catch. Couch ran up and spiked it and I saw [referee Terry] McAulay waving his arms."

Thomas: "We were in the moment of playing. It didn't really matter. We just knew we had to stop them."

After Couch spiked the football, McAulay interjected and said they would review Morgan's catch, even though NFL rules stipulate that a replay cannot take place if another play has started. McAulay would later cite a communication issue with the replay official.

King: "When you run a play, you cannot go back. We ran a play. Tim Couch spiked the ball. You cannot go back."

Steenson: "They reversed the call from a completed pass, which had given Cleveland a first down, to an incomplete pass, which turned the ball over to the Jaguars."

King: "Brutal call. Terry McAulay is still officiating now. I still see him today. There's no way he should still be officiating."

Manoloff: "That's when everything starts to go bananas. The big controversy was, 'Did McAulay get buzzed before before Couch snapped the ball?' Clearly, he did not stop play before Couch snapped the ball, which should have negated the replay, or so we thought."

King: "He said they had communication issues with the replay official. Too bad. That's just like a coach holding a [challenge] flag and throwing it too late after we snap the ball. Once the ball is snapped, you can't go back. No matter what it is. We felt robbed and the fans of Cleveland felt robbed. It was ridiculous. It was awful."

Steenson: "It was so close. You had to rely on what people told you. The replay official said he buzzed down before the snap, so that's what we went with. It's understandable the fans would be upset."

Manoloff: "Obviously, nobody knows that. In my mind, that's a little weak, to be honest."

Steenson: "We weren't privy. The only people that were privy to the timing of all of that were the referee and the umpire."

Randy Morgan, member of the chain gang: "The officials blew that one."

King: "We could've thrown it to the end zone and won the game and you would've taken the touchdown away from us? It's the same thing, really. You talk about bottles -- the Muni Lot people would've rushed the field. Terry McAulay might not have made it out."

Manoloff: "While he's going to look at the replay, bottles start coming. McAulay was under the hood. He comes out and he says the pass was incomplete. Now, it just goes nuts. Everybody is going crazy. Bottles are flying."

Steenson: "They were coming down like rain."

Browns coach Butch Davis gets no satisfaction after referee Terry McAuley reverses what would have been a completed first-down pass to Quincy Morgan.

King: "Butch was really animated about it. All the players were surrounding him."

Davis screamed and waved his arms in frustration as McAulay offered him an explanation. Couch stood behind his coach and shook his head. Cornerback Corey Fuller barked at McAulay. Davis stomped his feet, screamed some more and tossed aside his headset.

As bottles started landing on the field, CBS broadcaster Gus Johnson quipped: "It's getting ugly here in Cleveland." Nearly 10 seconds of silence elapsed before Johnson's broadcast partner, Brent Jones, added: "And it's getting ugly here fast."

Thomas: "It was like, 'Wow.' Chaos broke out."

Westmoreland: "They're throwing bottles from behind our bench, so we migrated toward the 50-yard line."

Thomas: "It was like, 'Why are we getting hit with the bottles? It's not our fault. We're not the refs.'"

Steenson: "It was scary to the extent that we didn't know if we were going to get hit by bottles or if the fans were going to charge the field. It was a pretty tense moment during the game, but we had a lot of security."

Manoloff: "I got hit with one bottle before the game was called and then two as the officials were exiting the field. They were just doinks on the top of my head and they didn't really hurt that much."

Thomas: "I got hit in the leg."

Pete Miragliotta, head of Cleveland's Tenable Protective Services, which employed the law enforcement, security, ushers and guest services for the game: "My CFO was the supervisor on the field. He got hit in the head with a water bottle. It actually opened him up."

Thomas: "Coach told us to run to the middle of the field just because we were so close to that sideline and people were getting hit by bottles. They told us to put our helmets on."

As time elapsed and McAulay tried to sort everything out, the field continued to fill with plastic bottles and other debris.

Miragliotta: "On radios, it was really tough to communicate and I had trained everybody in hand signals for years. We were using hand signals and trying to make sure we could get the refs off and the players off [the field]."

Jones called for McAulay to explain himself to the crowd, but he never did. Eventually, McAulay declared that the game was over, with 48 seconds showing on the clock.

Morgan: "We ran off the field. We left the poles and everything there."

Game officials rush off the field under a barrage of debris.

Manoloff: "There was all kinds of stuff flying onto the field. What was crazy to watch was how they were figuring out how to get guys off the field. The Browns players were, from what I could tell, safe. It's the home team and you don't think the fans are going to do anything to the home team. But the visiting team and officials, you had to wonder about."

Westmoreland: "Now, it came to, 'How are we going to get to the locker room with everybody throwing bottles?' That was a frenzy in itself. I remember the police officers trying to escort coach (Tom) Coughlin to the locker room. It was like the fans were waiting for him to come to the tunnel. A lot of us players just stood there on the 50-yard line. We weren't trying to go in until they got everything situated. At the end of the day, it was just a big mess."

Thomas: "When we were trying to get off the field, I was more afraid then, because there were so many fans covering the tunnel. That's when the bottles really started coming. When we were on the field, they lose some velocity because we were so far out there."

Miragliotta: "Our biggest concern was we wanted to make sure we were protecting the field. We didn't want a bunch of people coming over the walls. We were really focused, from our end, on protecting the field and then trying to blow out as many gates as we could to make sure that they could get out as fast as they could."

Manoloff: "McAulay is huddling with some security people. They're trying to figure out how to get him and a couple other officials off the field. My recollection is that McAulay got behind a wall of three or four people and they made a run for it. They went right past me and the stuff was flying out. I had my notebook above my head to protect me from any other hits."

More than 20 minutes had elapsed since the disputed fourth-down play.

King: "Guys were undressed. Guys were in the locker room. Butch had already talked to the team. He said, 'Hey, it is what it is.'"

Westmoreland: "That's when the league office called and said, 'You have to finish the game.'"

Steenson: "I had my jersey off. Most of the guys had their jerseys off, getting ready to go. Then the phone rang and it was Paul Tagliabue saying that the ref didn't have the authority to terminate the game and we had to complete the game. So we went out and completed it."

Miragliotta: "That was somewhat challenging and a little bit scary. A lot of people had left and then they tried to get back in the stadium and that was somewhat challenging at the gates."

Westmoreland: "That was a big uproar, because all of the coaches are like, 'Hey, they're still throwing bottles. We don't want the players to go back out there.' The starting offense had to come back out. We had to take a knee twice and then the game was over."

With just a handful of fans still lingering, the Jaguars and Browns prepare to play the final 48 seconds.

King: "You have guys out there with no shirt on, no pads on, no helmet, one shoe. We had to have 11 guys on defense for them to take a knee."

Thomas: "Coach said, 'We're not going to send everybody out there. We're just going to send the guys who have to be on the field at that time. I'm not putting more people in jeopardy.'"

Morgan: "Some of the guys are undressed and taking a shower when the referee comes in and says, 'Come on, fellas. We're going back out.' We all got dressed up again and went back out."

Thomas: "That was a little scary for those guys. The scary part was not going out on the field, it was getting out to the field through the tunnel."

King: "It was nuts. We didn't want to go. So the rookies and young guys on defense who were somewhat dressed -- some guys had to put clothes back on -- had to go out there and stand there so they could take a knee. Nobody wanted to go back out. It was cold. Guys are getting out of the shower. It was just a bad deal."

Miragliotta: "When they restarted the game, I think that [some fans] believed that the referees reversed their decision as far as the play with the receiver. The fans thought that was a football decision. That wasn't it. It was the decision that the game had ended. So the fans wanted to come back and that was challenging, because you had people trying to get out as fast as they can and now people trying to get back in because they think the decision with the reception had changed and that wasn't the case."

It was going to take a lot more than one diligent employee to clean up the mess on the field after "Bottlegate."

Westmoreland: "It was like we were the enemy. It seemed like the bottles were coming from all different directions. We were standing at the 50-yard line and we could look around the stadium and see so many bottles on the field. If somebody had a picture of that, a picture is worth 1,000 words. You could really tell the chaos that went on that day."

Thomas: "I don't think there were that many bottles thrown at the Browns, just the Jags and the refs. I felt bad for those guys. They didn't have on any padding or anything."

King: "Terry McAulay did an awful job. That was his fourth year as an official, but he did a poor job. The entire crew did."

Steenson: "It was just a perfect storm, so to speak. We had a close timing thing between the snap and replay and it was fourth down and it cost the Browns a playoff spot -- it was just a bunch of things happening at one time that created that circumstance."

Miragliotta: "The police officers that were working that day and the security that was working that day and guest services, I think we performed at an extremely high level. I don't know that there was anything more that we could have done, with all of that stuff going on."

Thomas: "You understand that those fans are very loyal. Those fans are going to do whatever it takes. That was one of the loudest stadiums. I remember always talking about how it was going to be chaos in the Dawg Pound."

Some of the most fervent fans hung around for the official finish between the Browns and Jaguars.

Westmoreland (who joined the Browns in 2004): "No matter win or lose, the Browns are some of the most loyal fans in the NFL. The crowd is always there. You have the Dawg Pound. Those fans are itching for some success and for the team to go to the playoffs."

Steenson: "I spoke to a church group last week and I had a list of memorable games and that was one of my memorable games. There were five or six other games in my career that were really memorable, but you remember stuff like that because it's so unusual. That never happens."

Manoloff: "It was a surreal event that you wanted to witness."

Miragliotta: "I got all these calls, people saying, 'I saw you on TV' or 'You were on the front page of the sports section.' Even a friend of mine was golfing in Bermuda and called me up and said, 'Hey, I'm in Bermuda and I see your picture in the sports page out here.' People started sending me copies of these newspapers from Florida and LA and Texas and Bermuda and New York and what I realized is the picture that they're all looking at is my [backside] and my bald spot. I do have a big [backside] and bald spot, so they knew it was me."

Thomas: "I coach at an inner city school. Once this year, we lost the game and our fans threw water bottles and stuff at us and it popped back up in my head."

Westmoreland: "I coach high school football now and I've shown some kids the video of it. You can see all the things that went on that day. It wows some of the kids that I coach."

King: "I'm not condoning that, by all means. It's wrong. But they paid $80 for a ticket and they're seeing their hometown team get robbed, so they're frustrated. And we were fighting for our lives to make the playoffs. Guys are passionate about that. That's your legacy, your team, your city. You go through the whole summer and two-a-days to get robbed by some guys who this is their weekend gig, as referees. It hurt."

Postgame pool report with referee Terry McAulay: