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Ancient history, but the Browns* cheated just like the Pats* did. Deebo and Peyton Manning explain....sort of.

Gildong Sack

Gildong Sack

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This may not be news to some of you and before I get flamed for posting Browns dominated material I just need to say I did a little research and though the consensus is this was technically not cheating, I am of a different opinion...this WAS cheating. So, you guys decide what you think about this. If you know anyone that is a Browns fan and throws the "8 championships" line at you...you can legitimatly say 4 are illegitimate.

In 1946 Paul Brown implemented the taxi squad...in 1946 they won their first AAFC championship. They would go on to win every year till 1949. A 4-peat.

No other team had a "taxi squad" while they won those 4 championships... so they had fresh people to rotate in and replace injured players while the other teams were stuck with a 33 man roster. So they skirted the league's "payroll rules" which I guess we would now call the salary cap by paying these guys on the side...how is that not cheating?

The Browns would go on to join the NFL and win the league championship in 1950 and two more times after that, but how much inertia did they have from their AAFC days? By that I mean attracting the best players, coaches, and perfecting their "farm system" so as to have the best extra players.

Deebo and Peyton hint at it being cheating around the 1:50 mark. What say you?

 
The AAFL didnt have a draft or any salary limits, and the browns had money, so they just outbid the nfl for a bunch of guys... so it was like they could have a bunch of top 10 draft picks every year
 
madinsomniac said:
The AAFL didnt have a draft or any salary limits, and the browns had money, so they just outbid the nfl for a bunch of guys... so it was like they could have a bunch of top 10 draft picks every year
Click to expand...
All true. Kinda funny to think the browns had $$.
 
Gildong Sack said:
This may not be news to some of you and before I get flamed for posting Browns dominated material I just need to say I did a little research and though the consensus is this was technically not cheating, I am of a different opinion...this WAS cheating. So, you guys decide what you think about this. If you know anyone that is a Browns fan and throws the "8 championships" line at you...you can legitimatly say 4 are illegitimate.

In 1946 Paul Brown implemented the taxi squad...in 1946 they won their first AAFC championship. They would go on to win every year till 1949. A 4-peat.

No other team had a "taxi squad" while they won those 4 championships... so they had fresh people to rotate in and replace injured players while the other teams were stuck with a 33 man roster. So they skirted the league's "payroll rules" which I guess we would now call the salary cap by paying these guys on the side...how is that not cheating?

The Browns would go on to join the NFL and win the league championship in 1950 and two more times after that, but how much inertia did they have from their AAFC days? By that I mean attracting the best players, coaches, and perfecting their "farm system" so as to have the best extra players.

Deebo and Peyton hint at it being cheating around the 1:50 mark. What say you?

Click to expand...

As a life long fan of the game, this was great. A lot of the Steelers history branched from the real Browns, not the current Browns. Chuck Noll had his start in the league as a player there and Cowher started as a coaching intern there.
I appreciate you posting this. James and Peyton were good in this.
 
madinsomniac said:
The AAFL didnt have a draft or any salary limits, and the browns had money, so they just outbid the nfl for a bunch of guys... so it was like they could have a bunch of top 10 draft picks every year
Click to expand...
Yes, but they did an end around on the roster limit giving them an unfair advantage...to me that is cheating and makes some of those titles illegitimate. It would be interesting to see how much these "taxi drivers" got paid versus a real taxi driver, and how it compares to the salary of a Browns active roster player at the time.

It's all ancient history now and we'll never know. I'm sure if the McBride family has any of those documents in their possession they will never see the light of day.

It's the AAFC not AAFL and all I could find on salary limits was they had "payroll rules" which I assumed was a cap as there were no other details.

The NFL decided around 2019 to include the AAFC in it's records so as to give Paul Brown more glory and boost his legendary status. Who does he surpass by them doing that?

That note, though, hasn't appeared since the 1980s. A move to include the AAFC's statistics picked up steam in 2019, when the NFL celebrated its 100th anniversary and dove deep into its history. That effort stalled when COVID-19 struck in 2020, and everyone's attention was diverted to merely getting through the season. But the push was recently revived and more data was uncovered. In 1949, the AAFC published a statistical record that included single game records for all four seasons and the game scoresheets have been recovered. The NFL league office conducted a review and, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it decided it was time to correct the oversight.
The most significant adjustment will be to Brown's coaching record. In the 2024 NFL record and fact book, Brown is credited with 21 seasons, 166 regular season wins, four postseason wins (for a career total of 170 wins) and three championships. But Brown coached the Cleveland Browns to the championship in every one of the AAFC's four seasons. He won 47 regular season games in the AAFC, and five additional postseason games. His career total, then, should be 222 victories and seven overall championships. The 222 victories will vault him up the all-time wins list. In the 2024 NFL record and fact book, Brown was in 21st place. With the AAFC adjustment, he will be in seventh place, just behind Curly Lambeau, who had 229 overall victories, and just ahead of Chuck Noll, with 209. Given Brown's outsized influence on coaching -- he is credited with, among other things, beginning the practice of using film analysis to grade players and calling plays from the sideline -- it is hard to imagine anyone quibbling with Brown's new rank.



 
Shane Falco said:
As a life long fan of the game, this was great. A lot of the Steelers history branched from the real Browns, not the current Browns. Chuck Noll had his start in the league as a player there and Cowher started as a coaching intern there.
I appreciate you posting this. James and Peyton were good in this.
Click to expand...
I belive he played there on special teams as well. Though this is old man memory saying this, so It may be the Chiefs.
 
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