There hasn't been a coach to put together consecutive winning seasons since Marty Schottenheimer parted ways with the Browns after the 1988 season. (USA Today)
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(Editor's note: The family of Marty Schottenheimer announced the former Browns coach passed away peacefully on Monday with family at his side. Schottenheimer, 77, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2014. This remembrance was posted on Thursday.)
Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
As the Browns rallied in the AFC divisional playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs to close to within 22-17, CBS analyst Tony Romo tugged at the hearts of long-suffering Cleveland fans and crooned, “There’s a gleam.”
Viewers over the age of 40 realized Romo captured the moment perfectly.
The corny catchphrase of Marty Schottenheimer signified hope and joy, the likes of which fans had not experienced since the most successful Browns coach in 30-plus years stomped the sidelines in the mid-1980s.
When Schottenheimer took over for Sam Rutigliano midway through the 1984 season, he unabashedly spoke of the Super Bowl and the Lombardi Trophy and of claiming “the world’s championship.”
“When you look at that trophy, there’s a reflection in that trophy,” Schottenheimer once explained. “Ultimately, there’s a gleam, men. That is our goal.”
That he didn’t claim it should not be Schottenheimer’s legacy. That he got closer than any other Browns coach is his legacy.
Schottenheimer, 77, entered into hospice care on Jan. 30, his family announced in a statement. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014.
The last time I spoke with Marty in October of 2016, he was preparing to travel from his home overlooking Lake Norman north of Charlotte, NC, to attend a 30th-year reunion of the 1986 Browns team that ended a 17-year franchise drought of not winning a post-season game. That team would lose two times to John Elway in the AFC Championship Game by 3 and 5 points. The Elway trilogy of terror was completed with a 1989 season loss of 16 points under Schottenheimer’s successor, Bud Carson.
Schottenheimer was physically healthy, Pat, his wife of 52 years had explained to me, but “he’s got that memory lag where he’ll ask you the same question three or four times.”
“I’m sitting here looking at a lake and it’s a spectacular setting,” Marty said over the phone. “Pat and I, the Lord’s blessed us. I mean, there’s no other way I can identify it. We’re doing really good.”
An authentic culture-changer
Schottenheimer’s time as Browns coach was relatively brief, only 4 ½ years. Yet his impact was indelible in the history of the franchise.
He took over after Rutigliano suffered a 1-7 start to the 1984 season. Schottenheimer, Sam’s defensive coordinator, refused the interim tag and demanded a three-year contract so the players would not consider him a substitute teacher. That stubbornness would mark his exit as much as his entrance.
Schottenheimer immediately changed the culture of the team by pulling 10th-round rookie running back Earnest Byner off the bench.
“He brought me into his office and told me, ‘Earnest, you’re my guy.’ I can remember that very vividly,” Byner told me.
Byner dragged the team, like a plow horse, to a 4-4 finish. When Schottenheimer added USFL-export Kevin Mack to the mix in 1985, he rode Mack and Byner each to 1,000-yard seasons despite the arrival of hotshot rookie quarterback Bernie Kosar.
The Browns’ downhill, smash-mouth football came to be known as Martyball. The stereotype preceded the bespectacled coach at future stops in Kansas City, Washington and San Diego.
“At the end of the day, Martyball is finding out what your players do best, and do that,” is how Schottenheimer explained it.
When Kosar and the front office demanded a more professional pass offense, Schottenheimer handed the reins to new offensive coordinator Lindy Infante. Before you knew it, the Browns were throwing out of “empty” sets long before it became the NFL rage.
Marty stubbornly clung to his beliefs, however. In a miked-up scene in the NFL Films-produced “A Football Life,” released in 2013, Schottenheimer turns to Infante during one game and asks, “Lindy, any thought about trying to run a bit?”
Schottenheimer was noted for the loosest tear ducts this side of Dick Vermeil, and for his failure to defeat Elway. He also lost a heart-breaker to Elway’s Broncos in a divisional playoff game with the Chiefs after the 1997 season.
He would receive more acclaim for overcoming adversity, such as coaching the Browns to the division title in 1988 through five quarterback injuries, and steering Washington to an 8-8 season after an 0-5 start in 2001.
I witnessed perhaps Schottenheimer’s shining moment in the strike season of 1987. He and his staff took a collection of teachers, truck drivers, bar tenders and semi-professionals, and molded them into a team in 10 days. In the locker room following a 20-10 victory in Foxboro, MA, against the New England Patriots, Schottenheimer positively glowed in the triumph.
Jeff Christensen, the quarterback who was called from tending bar in the Flats for the strike replacement team after being cut in training camp, said on Wednesday, “I remember it vividly. After the game, he told me, ‘There’s no other way to say this. I really love you kids.’”
Marty’s final game as Browns coach in 1988 was a painful, 24-23 playoff loss to the Houston Oilers in which Byner committed back-to-back personal fouls. The next day, I phoned owner Art Modell for his comments and plans. Without informing Schottenheimer, Modell bellowed that he would demand staff changes of Marty, including a reassignment of Schottenheimer’s brother, Kurt, who was special teams coach.
When GM Ernie Accorsi read the story in the morning paper, he intercepted Schottenheimer and pleaded with him to take a week vacation to cool tempers before meeting with Modell. Schottenheimer refused, and stormed into Modell’s office. Less than a half-hour later, Schottenheimer stormed out, leaving Browns PR to hastily prepare a release to explain the club had “parted ways” with the coach who had made four consecutive playoff appearances, including two in the AFC Championship Game.
In my phone conversation with Marty in 2016, he said, “It was the dumbest thing I did. I mean, what the hell, leaving there. God only knows I might still be there. I’ve said to my wife and a number of people, of all the decisions I made in my life, it’s the one I regret the most.”
Always a winner
Schottenheimer left Cleveland with four winning seasons and a 46-31 record. The three coaches he preceded had losing records, as well as the 12 full-time head coaches who followed him, including Bill Belichick – until Kevin Stefanski.
Within hours of leaving the Browns, Schottenheimer was hired as coach of the Chiefs, who had not won a post-season game in 17 seasons. In 10 years in Kansas City, Schottenheimer produced nine consecutive winning seasons. Like in Cleveland, he got no further than the AFC Championship Game.
His post-season failures followed him to his fourth NFL stop in San Diego, where he was fired after a 14-2 season that ended in a torturous 24-21 loss to Belichick’s Patriots in a divisional playoff game.
In 21 full seasons as an NFL head coach, Shottenheimer had two losing seasons. His 200 career regular-season victories rank eighth all-time among NFL coaches. He is the winningest NFL coach without a league championship. His 5-13 record in the postseason is the worst among coaches with more than 10 appearances.
“Disappointment? Sure,” Schottenheimer said. “But I never let it consume me.”
In March of 2011, Schottenheimer returned to the sidelines at the age of 67 to coach in the upstart United Football League. His Virginia Destroyers went 4-1 in the shortened season and played the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Locomotives in the league’s final game.
Martyball rode defense and former NFL running back Dominic Rhodes to a 14-3 victory. It was Schottenheimer’s first league championship. He bowed out a winner, after all.