Spirit of Paul Brown Inspires Bengals

BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Why not begin at the beginning?

When head coach Bruce Coslet convened his first Bengals' team last month in training camp, he stepped to the podium with Paul Brown.

Brown created, coached and then chaired the Cincinnati Bengals with turn-of-the century, wrought-iron will before dying six training camps ago.

But there he was on the night of July 17 at Georgetown College. Coslet had obtained a copy of the outline of the speech the old man delivered to open the Bengals' camps of the early 1970s, complete with Brown's notes jotted in the margins.

The man they called ''PB,'' always touched on what he called ''the eternal verities.'' Honesty. Hard work. Love of family. A little corny for the MTV generation, but Coslet put the same ideas into '90s-speak: You get nothing for nothing.

''They talk about his cold steely eyes and all that,'' says Coslet, the long-haired tight end from the '70s who sacrificed his body for Brown's special teams. ''He just didn't want anyone fooling with his team. Well, the same with me.

''Not all the stuff he used to tell us applies anymore,'' Coslet says. ''But a lot of it still does. I paraphrased. Used quotes. He updated every year.''

Now Coslet is the man who is updating. He is mixing the PB creed with his own ideas, hoping a brew of the past and present is potent enough for the NFL of a new century.

For the first time since their playoff runs in the late '80s, the Bengals' coaching staff is drenched in the Paul Brown legacy, six years after he died, 22 years after he stopped coaching, 30 years after he went to the Hall of Fame. And the year they named their new stadium after him.

* * *

Of the Bengals' 13 coaches, eight have heard Paul Brown open training camp with a speech when he was either the coach/general manager from 1968-75, or just the general manager from 1976 until his Aug. 5, 1991, death at 82:

•The top three coaches (Coslet, assistant head coach/defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, offensive coordinator Ken Anderson) played for Brown. Each has participated in at least one Super Bowl as a player or coach for the Bengals.

''I'm not a yeller, that's not my style,'' LeBeau says. ''When I worked with Coach Paul and saw how he drove home a point rarely raising his voice, I knew that I could be successful with my demeanor because he was.''

•Running backs coach Jim Anderson, dean of the club's position coaches, spent eight drafts with Brown as general manager. Anderson has coached five 1,000-yard running backs, often referring reporters to a PB quote he keeps handy: ''All of us are important. None of us are necessary.''

•General Manager Paul Brown nodded in the 1983 draft room when the Bengals picked Washington defensive back Ray Horton -- now the secondary coach -- in the second round and Wisconsin noseguard Tim Krumrie -- now the defensive line coach -- in the 10th. They were key figures in the 1988 Super Bowl season. Offensive assistant John Garrett, a free agent wide receiver, was in two Bengals' camps. Kim Wood became Brown's first strength coach in 1975 and is still in the weight room.

I think the first thing I should tell you is that by way of ownership and total operating control I am the man you must deal with. In the final analysis, there is no other. I don't say this in the spirit of bragging or bulldozing somebody - and I don't want to think or act like a hard man. I would like to earn the thought from you that I am just and understanding - but you must know from the beginning that there is no way to circumvent the principles on which I stand.'' - Excerpt from Coach Paul Brown's opening address of Bengals' training camp July 15, 1973

''If he told you something, you could count on it,'' Krumrie says. ''If he said you'd get a contract after the year, you'd get it. The one thing I remember from his talk when I was a rookie was how he said you should put your money in the bank and take care of your family. You work with a guy like that, you can't help but be influenced.''

Some would argue that has been the Bengals' problem: They hire people they know. Tradition is nice, but isn't it also cheap and stodgy?

Yet from 1968-1990, the Bengals made the playoffs seven times and their two Super Bowl appearances for the AFC were bested only by the Steelers, Raiders, Dolphins and Broncos. That looks pretty good in a decade where the Bengals have had more stadium leases (3) than winning seasons (1).

''Guys like Bruce, Kenny, Dick, Krumrie, Ray Horton, they have been successful in this organization,'' says quarterback Boomer Esiason, who has returned after four years away. ''They know how Mike Brown runs a football team. They know how Paul Brown ran a football team. And a lot of the basic principles of organizing a football team come right out of the Paul Brown playbook.''

* * *

Heck, Paul Brown invented the playbook. Not to mention full-time coaching staffs. Meetings. IQ tests. The draw play. Calling plays from the bench using a messenger. The radio helmet. The face mask. The 40-yard dash (that was about the length of a punt, so he timed players running the distance to see who could cover kicks).

When one player showed up at the Cleveland Browns in 1964, two years after PB was fired by Art Modell, it was the first time he had been given a playbook despite three previous stops in the NFL.

Paul Brown was a demanding bantam, a small and feisty child of Norman Rockwell's middle America of the early 20th century. He dominated football with his towering intellect and his players with curt sarcasm that demanded everything. He tamed a wild frontier sport with rules.

''Maybe this game is just a little bit too big for you,'' Kenny Anderson can remember Brown observing after the film projector had been stopped and started a few times.

Before Paul Brown professionalized football after World War II, the game was merely a weekend curiosity, right there with circus acts and wrestlers.

Coslet looks behind the face mask and glimpses a metaphor.

''You ask about his impact on us, the Bengals. Every player who puts on a uniform feels the affect of him,'' he says.

But like all great leaders, the name Paul Brown sparks a passionate debate.

•How could he opt for Tiger Johnson as his Bengals' coaching successor in 1976 instead of future Hall-of-Famer Bill Walsh?

•How much did his hard-line bargaining cost the club in those tireless holdouts of the 1980s?

•Did he have to be that aloof from the players?

But these are irrefutable facts:

•Paul Brown coached the Bengals to three playoffs in eight seasons, the club best.

•The two worst coaches in Bengals' history -- Homer Rice and Dave Shula -- were the only two who never played for him, against him, or spent a full season under him when he was general manager.

•When Shula opted for Ron Lynn and then Larry Peccatiello as his defensive coordinators from 1992-96, it marked the first time in the franchise since Hank Bullough from 1980-83 that the position had been held by people who had never played for Brown or worked under him when he was a coach or GM.

Coincidence? Coincidence that the Bengals are trying to end their worst stretch ever by turning to family? It has been a six-year, 29-67 disaster marked by a split on the coaching staff between career Bengals and coaches who came from outside the organization.

In the last few seasons of Shula's regime, some coaches from outside the club resented those who came from it. They figured ''family'' would always have a job, while they would eventually be fired. They didn't always understand the Bengal way.

Mike Brown, PB's 62-year-old heir, won't comment on such a division. But he likes this staff's link to the past.

''I think there is something to it, the people who trace back to him,'' he says. ''It makes them more familiar with what we're doing. We're people who understand each other, and, if anything, that makes things go smoothly.''

Coslet says he has simply surrounded himself with the best coaches he knows. He coached the New York Jets for four years. But what he knows best is Paul Brown's Bengals.

''When I was with Pittsburgh the last five years, I would even surprise myself at how many times I would tell Paul Brown stories,'' says LeBeau, who, like Coslet, also went away but came back. He's beginning his second term as the Bengals' defensive coordinator: "It seemed like you realized the impact of his personality only when you got away from it.''

Mike Brown says every coach is different. He could even say every general manager is different. Remember, Mike Brown signed Ki-Jana Carter for about what the Bengals paid for their franchise in 1967.

''These guys aren't all like my father and (they don't) do all the things he did,'' he says. ''But there's a little bit of him inside all of us.''

* * *

It's a practice a few days before the exhibition opener. No. 1 running back Ki-Jana Carter gets clotheslined after a carry, and Coslet is screaming at people, reminding them it's not full speed.

''My Dad didn't believe in a lot of contact and his practices were shorter than anyone else's,'' Mike Brown says. ''A lot of that has rubbed off on Bruce. He felt there was a learning curve and it was counterproductive to overwork players because they became less attentive.''

No one will say it, but there are those in the organization who believe Shula's practices dragged too long and there was too much contact for a team in the middle of a 16-game season. But that was the Shula way.

This is the Paul Brown way. Wood, the longtime strength coach, believes of all Brown's successors, Coslet is the most similar when it comes to demands, organization and temperament. The players point to Coslet's post-practice conditioning during the final nine games last season (after Shula's dismissal) as a major reason they went 7-2 with five second-half rallies.

''He was demanding and there was always accountability with him,'' Coslet says. ''You have to be accountable. And you always knew where you stood with him, and I liked that as a player. I always wanted to know how I was doing.''

The old man didn't believe in big fines. He thought a well-placed barb in front of a player's peers was nearly as effective. Coslet, who never met a sarcastic word he didn't like, likes to give shots, too.

''I spent a lot of time talking to PB on buses and planes,'' Esiason says. ''You always knew who was the boss. There was never a question about that. Bruce has that. He's the boss.''

* * *

There is also the knack for offense. In his last season, the ill PB would occasionally emerge from his office and watch the Bengals' last playoff club, sometimes wondering why the Bengals were hardly passing.

''You know me,'' he said, bundled up during a cold Riverfront Stadium practice. ''I'm a fire-and-fall back guy.''

''That doesn't mean he didn't want a balanced package,'' Coslet says now. ''His great teams ran the ball. What he meant was that we'll take our shots down the field and if it doesn't work, we'll reload and try something else.''

Which is how the Bengals have lived for 41 games under Jeff Blake. Like Paul Brown's great teams, this one relies on the quarterback, and Blake is held to some high standards.

Kenny Anderson, the only NFL quarterback to win back-to-back passing titles in different decades, recalled a meeting he had with Otto Graham, Brown's Hall-of-Fame quarterback in Cleveland, early in his career. Brown began his controversial messenger system during the Graham era, in which he called plays from the sidelines, sending in the play with a guard.

''Otto asked me if I ever changed the play or called an audible,'' Anderson says. ''I told him not much, and he said, 'If you do it, make sure it works.' ''

* * *

That's because Paul Brown could make a man three times his size cower in fear of his cutting, one-sentence critiques accompanied by a science-fiction stare.

''He'd make those meetings uncomfortable,'' Anderson says. ''He had to say what he had to say, but the good thing about it was once he went out of the room, it was forgotten. Time to move on. That's something I try to do.''

LeBeau says Brown was the master of understatement.

During his rookie year in Cleveland, the Browns were trying to hold on fourth-and-one and LeBeau thought he made a good play on a hitch pattern. He tackled the receiver after a 2-yard gain, and, even though it was a first down, the Browns held later in the drive.

But while kneeling on one knee on the sideline, LeBeau felt Brown leaning over and talking into his ear. ''Everyone in the stadium knew they were going to run that play but you, LeBeau.''

''That was his way of saying he wished I was covering the man a little closer,'' LeBeau says.

LeBeau played only a training camp with the Browns back in 1959, before PB cut him and he went on to become a Pro Bowl cornerback in Detroit. There were no hard feelings because the Browns were stacked, and 21 years later LeBeau came to the Bengals as secondary coach.

LeBeau probably would have been a teacher if he didn't play football, so he can appreciate what Brown brought to the game.

''He was a professor of football,'' LeBeau says. ''It was a teaching environment. No yelling, screaming. He'd point out the error, and instruct the correction. Let the player know what he has to do to be successful and you don't have to raise your voice.''

* * *

It's after lunch at training camp and Coslet would love to talk more PB. But he can't. There's an offensive staff meeting, just like one of those sessions Paul Brown first convened long ago.

''We're done,'' says Coslet, briskly walking away in hopes the legacy counts for at least a few wins.

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