In their NFL debut in 1950, the Browns, four-time champs of the

rival All-America Football Conference, crushed the defending NFL

champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10. Philly's 5-2 defense
couldn't cover the sideline comebacks. The Giants scouted that
game and, dropping the ends in their 6-1 alignment into
linebacker positions, stopped the Browns when the teams met two
weeks later. The 4-3, today's standard defensive set, was born.
"After the game against the Eagles," says Graham, "their coach,
Greasy Neale, said we were nothing but a basketball team. Pretty
good basketball team, huh?"
In 1955, after completing an unremarkable career at Louisville,
getting drafted in the ninth round by the Pittsburgh Steelers
and being released near the end of training camp, 22-year-old
John Unitas was the quarterback for the Bloomfield Rams in
western Pennsylvania. He made six bucks a game. "They called it
semipro football," he says. "Actually it was just sandlot, a
bunch of guys knocking the hell out of each other on an
oil-soaked field under the Bloomfield Bridge."
Five years later, after Unitas had led the Baltimore Colts to
two NFL championships, Eagles quarterback Norm Van Brocklin was
asked what made Unitas so great. "He knows what it's like to eat
potato soup seven days a week," the Dutchman replied.
Unitas became synonymous with toughness on the field, for
stepping up in the teeth of the rush and delivering the ball. "I
often thought that sometimes he'd hold the ball one count longer
than he had to," Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Merlin Olsen
once said, "just so he could take the hit and laugh in your face."
"I kept a picture of Johnny U. over my bed," Namath once said.
"To me he meant one thing--toughness."
How did Unitas change the game? He was the antithesis of the
highly drafted, highly publicized young quarterback. He
developed a swagger, a willingness to gamble. He showed that
anyone with basic skills could beat the odds if he wanted to
succeed badly enough and was willing to work.
He's 65 now, vice president of sales for a computer electronics
firm and chairman of Unitas Management Corp., a sports
management firm, and the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational
Foundation, which awards scholarships. On a sunny day in May we
sat on the porch that overlooks his 19 acres of pastureland in
Baldwin, Md., and I mentioned my favorite quote of his: "You
don't arrive as a quarterback until you can tell the coach to go
to hell."