18-0.
One win away from the greatest season in NFL history.
Only the second team to reach that sacred summit of perfection in professional football, right?
Wrong.
You might not read about it in any official NFL record books, but there was another professional football team that achieved perfection before the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
And it wasn’t some defunct team from the USFL or WFL.
No, the Cleveland Browns attained the first perfect season in 1948.
Only this was before they played in the NFL. The Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts all competed in a rival league from 1946 to 1949, the All-American Football Conference (AAFC), that surprisingly boasted better average attendance at their games than the National Football League. So popular were the Browns, in fact, that the NFL champion Cleveland Rams fled for Los Angeles before the Cleveland Browns with Ohio legend Paul Brown as coach had played a single game.
And for good reason did they leave. The Cleveland Browns were a juggernaut in the AAFC, winning all four league championships and dominating with an 52-4-3 record over that span, pulling in the largest crowds in professional football history.
In 1948, the Browns finished with a perfect 15-0 record amid a 29-game unbeaten streak. Not that it was all easy. The San Francisco 49ers played them tough that season when both teams were undefeated, losing 14-7 in front of 82,769 fan at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and 31-28 two weeks later in San Francisco. The Browns also survived a special AAFC Thanksgiving promotion that saw them play three games in eight days.
The Browns overcame every obstacle and crushed the Buffalo Bills in the AAFC championship game 49-7 to claim professional football’s first perfect season.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, that’s great, but were they any good?
Well, the Browns went on to win the championship again in 1949 and when it was announced that three teams from the AAFC would merge with the NFL in 1950, the four-time defending AAFC champion Cleveland Browns were matched up against the two-time defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles to kick off the season. At Philadelphia Municipal Stadium in front of 71,000 fans, ‘The World Series of Football’ proved to be a mismatch as the Browns, led by quarterback Otto Graham, destroyed the Eagles 35-10.
The Browns would go on to win the NFL championship that year, beating the juggernaut Los Angeles Rams in the title game on a last-second field goal. Afterwards, NFL commissioner Bert Bell called the Cleveland Browns “the greatest team to ever play football.”
The Browns would play in the next five NFL championship games, winning three more. Over a ten year span, the Cleveland Browns and quarterback Otto Graham played in 10 consecutive championship game, winning seven.
So before we crown the 2007 New England Patriots the greatest team of all-time and Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all-time, perhaps we should look at the teams of pro football past. Especially teams that don’t crow about their success and pop champagne every year to celebrate their greatness.
