I thought it was interesting that Mrs. Noll said, in that piece, that after 1980, he told her, "We are old, we don't have high draft picks, and it's going to be pretty rough here for a while." He was fully aware that, after the glory of the 1970's, that they were not going to be very good for a while, and he was right. But as I pointed out previously, the 80's were bad compared to the 70's, but overall, they still had a better decade than many teams do, continuously. They had four playoff seasons, and won two playoff games. Can the Browns make this claim since the late 80's? No, they cannot.
Cowher followed up with 6 straight playoff seasons to start his career, 6 in a row. Not to beat a dead horse, but by the time Noll hung it up, he did re-build the team for Cowher to coach. Among those players Cowher inherited were:
Woodson
Lloyd
Lake
NOD
Foster
Hoge
John Jackson
Love
Dirt
Haselrig
Tunch
Gerald Williams
Hardy Nickerson
Little
DJ
Perry
Not exactly chopped liver.