Even those who didn't see Jim Brown play know his greatness
Cleveland Browns Hall of Famer Jim Brown looks on as the Browns play the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on November 7, 2004 in Baltimore. Credit: Getty Images/Doug Pensinger
John Mara’s conscious life with the Giants begins with Jim Brown.
“My earliest memories of being on the sideline at Yankee Stadium are seeing Jim Brown play for the Browns against our defense and Sam Huff,” the Giants’ co-owner told Newsday on Friday evening, a few hours after the news of Brown’s passing, at age 87, became public. “Those were some legendary battles. I can still hear some of the hits that were occurring at the time. As an 8- or 9-year-old or whatever I was, it made quite an impression.”
Even before he saw Brown playing, or at least knew to appreciate what he was seeing when he did, Mara already had been schooled in the significance of the man. His father, Wellington Mara, the team’s owner during those halcyon days of the 1950s and early 1960s, often preached to his eldest son that in order for the Giants to get to the NFL Championship Game, they had to win the Eastern Conference, and that meant dealing with Brown and his Cleveland team.
Wellington Mara often said that was why the Giants had Huff; he was the only linebacker in the league who stood a chance at trying to stop Brown.
“He was bigger than life,” Mara said. “He was the best running back in the game, maybe even the best player in the game at that point of his career. We had some great battles with them. The road to the NFL Championship Game always seemed to go between the Giants and Cleveland and having to win those games against them in order to get there. Those were some pretty cool memories.”
During the nine years Brown played in the NFL, from 1957-65, either the Giants or Browns won the Eastern Conference eight times. They needed a one-game playoff to decide the winner in 1958, and Pat Summerall’s 49-yard field goal through the snow at Yankee Stadium gave the Giants a 13-10 victory. It was, many believed at the time, one of the greatest games ever played, a title that did not last very long. A week later, the Giants lost to the Colts in overtime.
“He was such a dominant player at the time,” Mara said. “Everybody feared going against him, and for good reason. We won our share of the battles going against him and he won his share also. If he had played a few more years, God only knows what kind of records he would have set.”
The most amazing part of Brown’s legacy as a player isn’t the way the dwindling numbers who saw him rule the gridiron recall his exploits. The way he Godzilla-ed his way through a league of Tokyos. Or the way he would carry multiple defenders for extra yardage and rise up slowly as if the run had taken everything out of him and he actually might need to catch his breath, only to receive the ensuing handoff and hit the line of scrimmage with even more ferocity.
The most amazing part of Brown’s legacy as a player is that right up to the day he died, he still was appreciated for those traits and still personified what it is to be a football player, even by those who did not actually see him play. At least not in person, as Mara was lucky enough to have done, and certainly not on those old television sets that were built much like Brown himself: About 6-2 and 230 pounds of solid immovability.
Brown hadn’t carried a football in more than 57 years when he passed away on Thursday. He retired before there was such a thing as a Super Bowl. More than half of the NFL’s history has come since his abrupt retirement, and still he is remembered as the baddest man to ever carry a football. That kind of shelf life is rare in the world of sports.
Baseball has a statistical and spatial consistency that allows the imagination to place players in different eras and see how they would perform. We can compare the slash lines of Ruth and Ohtani and draw conclusions from them.
Basketball has a much more fluid narrative. It has a debate every decade or so — sometimes every month, it seems — over who stands among its greatest players. Its Rushmores and Parthenons are continuously being torn down and refaced.
Football is very much a game of its own times, with every phase appreciated. It has changed too much from generation to generation to easily shuffle anyone from his place to another point in its century-long arc. Players stand out in their eras because of their abilities, yes, but also because those abilities mesh with the stage of the game into which they arrive.
Jim Brown, though, remains one of football’s few every-era players — undoubtedly its only running back. He would have succeeded in the game in its infancy, would have succeeded in the game today, and certainly succeeded like almost no one else ever has during the short nine years in which he clobbered and dominated the NFL.
“I’m not sure I ever saw anybody better,” Mara said. “I don’t know if anyone can compare to Jim Brown, given the era he played in and the statistics he compiled. I’m not sure anybody can ever measure up to that.
“He was certainly one of the greatest who ever played, and anyone who ever saw him play will always remember that.”
That so many of us today did not actually see it yet still remember him that way?
That’s next level.
That’s Jim Brown.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
