Will the ‘curses’ evaporate for Lions and Browns?

Who are you picking to make it to the 2023 Super Bowl? How about the Detroit Lions v. the Cleveland Browns? If so, it would be a “rematch” of the 1957 professional football championship game – before the Super Bowl existed.

Sad to say, but 1957 was the last time these two sorry franchises – Detroit and Cleveland – faced off in the title game. By golly, some of the youngest fellows who played in that 1957 gridiron classic are now in their upper-80s. Incidentally, the Lions won convincingly that year, 59-14. 

A Detroit versus Cleveland Super Bowl matchup in 2023 would, of course, require a major miracle, overcoming tremendous, off-the-charts odds…and the “poofing” of the dreaded curses that have haunted both ball clubs for decades. 

The more distressing situation of the two is in Detroit, because the Lions’ franchise has been hexed the longest – by the “Bobby Layne Curse.”

 

Layne is considered by many to be the best quarterback to ever wear a Detroit uniform. Why was he was traded away abruptly by coach George Wilson in 1958? Lions fans were livid; players were distraught. 

Joe Schmidt, the Lions’ stellar middle linebacker, spoke up at the time: “It makes me sick. I think it’s a big mistake. He’s…a damned good quarterback.” Layne had carried Detroit to titles in 1952 and 1953 and to the final game in 1954. 

“I think Bobby had that attitude that, hey, ‘I brought championships to you and now you’re going to broom me?’” Schmidt said.

 

Wilson told Layne about the trade in a telephone conversation, not face-to-face. Layne was visibly shaken and angry. As he cleared out his locker, preparing to ship off to his new team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Layne may have muttered something like the Lions would “not win for 50 years,” with expletives deleted. 

The Lions went from dismal and disgusting to destitute. In 2016, Terrence Moore, a respected free lance journalist, interviewed Bobby Layne’s son, Alan Layne. 

“My dad had a temper,” Alan Layne said. “That’s why…he said about Detroit: ‘You no-good, lousy, blankety-blanks won’t win another championships for 50 years.’” 

Detroit fans were eager for the 2008 season to arrive, to witness the expiration of the 50-year curse. It didn’t happen. Rather, the hex intensified. The Lions became a team of infamy – the first club to go winless (0-16) for an entire season in 2008. 

On the bright side, Detroit got to pick first in the 2009 NFL draft. Fans prayed that the end of the curse was in sight. 

The Lions selected Matthew Stafford, a quarterback out of the University of Georgia. Was magic in the air? Stafford and Layne went to the same high school in Dallas, Texas, and Stafford lived on the same street as Layne’s aunt and uncle, Moore reported.

 

Yet, there were no fireworks in the sky over Detroit. From 2009-20, Stafford built a solid reputation as a capable performer as the quarterback of a sub-par team. As the Detroit quarterback, his record was 74-90-1, extending the misery in the Motor City for yet another decade. 

The trade winds blew in 2021 and Stafford was moved to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for Jared Goff, who played his college ball at California. Goff fell right into place among the cursees – leading the Lions to a dismally disappointing season last year. 

But lo and behold, what happened to Stafford? Out from under the weight of the curse, he carried the Rams to a stunning Super Bowl victory. Can he do it again? 

 

Cleveland fans are hopeful to crack its curse as well

It was the team owner, not a discarded player, who brought the curse to the Cleveland Browns. 

As background: Art Modell was working as an advertising executive in New York City when he purchased the Cleveland Browns franchise in 1961. The Browns were a strong team in those days, featuring running back Jim Brown and coached by the legendary Paul Brown. 

Modell canned Paul Brown in 1963 and promoted assistant Blanton Collier to head coach. Collier responded by guiding Cleveland to the league title in 1964, dispatching the Baltimore Colts, 27-0. 

Could that game have been an omen – a warning about the dreaded “Art Modell Curse” that began in 1995, when Modell abruptly announced he was moving the Cleveland franchise to Baltimore for the 1996 season? 

It was an eerie turn of events and evoked memories from 1984, when the Baltimore Colts became the Indianapolis Colts. A History.com writer said that Colts’ owner Bob Irsay moved the club to Indiana “in the middle of the night, while the city of Baltimore slept.”

At the time, Modell was one of the owners who piled on to criticize Irsay for uprooting the Colts.

 

About a decade later, Cleveland fans accused Modell of breaking his promise that he would never move out of Cleveland. Joe Posnanski of NBC Sports said Modell’s “tore out Cleveland’s heart.” 

Modell got mad at the City of Cleveland and yanked the ball away, just like Lucy Van Pelt did in the “Peanuts” comic strip when Charlie Brown was attempting a kick. 

Modell stated his relationship with Cleveland’s city leaders was “irrevocably severed.” He was quoted as saying: “The bridge is down, burned, disappeared. There’s not even a canoe there for me.” 

Baltimore was hungry to reverse its condition of being “football team-less,” since the “bolt by the Colts” orchestrated by Irsay. The entire State of Maryland was “ready, willing and able” to re-hang the moon for Mr. Modell. 

Cleveland sued Modell and eventually accepted a legal settlement to keep the Browns’ legacy in Cleveland. The NFL announced in 1996 that the Browns franchise would be “deactivated” for three years and a “new Browns team” would emerge from the ashes to begin play in 1999. 

Furthermore, the “reactivated team for Cleveland” would retain the Browns’ name, colors, history, records, awards and archives. 

Modell was effectively granted a “new franchise” for Baltimore and could take with him the “current contracts of players and other football personnel.” Technically, Modell was allowed to move the football organization, but not the franchise itself. 

Modell expressed no remorse and never looked back. His first order of business in 1996 was to move jolly-well ahead come up with a name for his new Baltimore team. 

The Baltimore Oriole was the state bird and the mascot for Baltimore’s pro baseball team, so fans voted to remain in the ornithology section by selecting the Ravens as the nickname for the new football team. It represents a historical link to “The Raven,” a poem written in 1845 by Baltimore resident Edgar Allan Poe. 

The Ravens have had some success on the field, capturing two Super Bowl titles, in 2000 and 2013. (Modell died in 2012 at age 87.) 

Meanwhile, back on the shore of Lake Erie in Cleveland, the “new” Browns took the field in 1999. The Browns had requested that its “re-opening game” opponent be its old rival, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

 

Mascots Brownie and Chomps

The Browns got pounded, 43-0. That shellacking set the tone for the next two decades of Browns’ ineptitude and gave rise to the notion that the clu had been poisoned by the “Art Modell Curse.” 

The 2017 season was mortifying. The Browns lost every game to go 0-16. That gave them a place in the NFL records along side the aforementioned winless Lions in 2008. 

In 2020, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced its “centennial year class.” Modell was considered but not selected to join the Hall of Fame. Tons of Cleveland Browns’ fans celebrated the news by performing their “happy dance” on social media. 

 

So what are the experts prediciting

for the Browns and Lions in 2022?

 

More mediocrity, at best. Ashley Bastock of Cleveland.com forecasts that Cleveland will go 9-8 this year. 

That’s a bit rosy, in my book, as the Browns are in a bit of disarray at the quarterback position, having moved up their backup Jacoby Brissett into the starting lineup to begin the season. He’s ranked as the 31st best starting quarterback in the league (out of 32) by football analyst Steven Ruiz of ForTheWin.com.

 

The guy of the bottom, according to Ruiz, is Mitch Trubisky, who has taken over the signal calling duties with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers and the Browns are in the same division, so they will play each other twice during the regular season. 

These professional football games could be fun for Atlantic Coast Conference football fans to tune to. Brissett played for the North Carolina State Wolpack, and Trubisky spent some time of the gridiron with Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina.

 

As for the Lions, Christian Booher of Sports Illustrated picks them to go 8-9. Goff is only a few ticks above Brissett and Trubisky on Ruiz’s chart – the 25th best starting quarterback in the land.

 

If there’s a new hope for a “curse buster in Detroit,” it’s former University of Michigan Wolverine Aidan Hutchinson, a defensive standout who was drafted No. 2 overall by the Lions. He “immediately became one of the more popular young athletes in Motown,” wrote Brandon Brown of Wolverine Digest.

Lion fans are prayerful. Please, Mr. Layne, enough is enough.