Minnifield’s Injury Leaves Browns in Great Pain : He and His Replacement Are Victimized by Plunkett, Williams in Raider Win

The first thing that happened to the Cleveland Browns in their game against the Raiders at the Coliseum was, as it turned out, the worst thing.

The Browns and the Raiders played for a seemingly interminable 3 hours 34 minutes. They ran 125 plays. There were 5 touchdown plays, 2 field goals, 29 pass completions and 8 quarterback sacks. Not to mention 32 all-important third-down plays, as the TV commentators would say.

But none of those mattered to the Browns as much as the first play of the game, because that play, a harmless-looking incompletion from Jim Plunkett to Rod Barksdale, started a domino for Cleveland that contributed greatly to its eventual 27-14 loss.

Frank Minnifield, the Browns’ left cornerback, went in motion with one of the Raider receivers as Plunkett called signals on the play.

“I took about five steps and suddenly I felt like somebody had shot me in the leg,” Minnifield said afterward.

The pain was in his right calf, an area that he had injured slightly against the Miami Dolphins in last Monday night’s game.

“I stayed in there,” Minnifield said. “This was a big game for us and I hoped it would just clear itself up.”

But four plays later, it hadn’t. And Minnifield found himself chasing the Raiders’ Dokie Williams down the left sidelines as Williams ran under a pass from Plunkett. Williams caught the ball, squirmed out of the grasp of Minnifield and ran into the end zone for a quick Raider lead.

“I shouldn’t have even been out there,” Minnifield said. “I waited one play too long.”

So, with the Raider lead 7-0 and only 2:30 gone off the game clock, Minnifield went to the sideline in pain, not wanting to put his team in any further jeopardy with misplaced macho. Quickly, he was taken to the locker room, his injury to be diagnosed as a torn calf muscle.

And quickly, Coach Marty Schottenheimer, left to try and stop the veteran Plunkett with a now outmanned defensive backfield, had to make an adjustment that neither he, nor his team, was used to or particularly liked.

First, he had to replace Minnifield with the relatively inexperienced Mark Harper. Then, because of Harper’s inexperience, Schottenheimer had to send in instructions for his defensive backfield to shift to a mostly zone concept. The feeling was that Harper, a first-year man out of Alcorn State whose pro experience was one season with Jacksonville of the USFL, would get the most help against Plunkett in a zone concept.

The Browns, however, play a zone in their defensive backfield sparingly. And grudgingly.

“The joke around Cleveland with some of our writers,” said Kevin Byrne, Browns’ vice president in charge of public relations, “is that any time Marty sends in zone coverage instructions, Minnifield and Hanford Dixon, the other cornerback, start waving him off. These guys want to go man-to-man, head-to-head.”

Move now to the first play of the fourth period.

The Browns, looking sluggish and overmatched in the first half, had somehow come out of their shell and cut the Raider lead to 17-14. Suddenly, a game which had wandered aimlessly through a two-hour first half and should have been bottled by a sleeping pill company, had drama.

Plunkett brought his Raiders out, second and nine on the Browns’ 43. Along the Cleveland sideline, Schottenheimer’s staff had sent in the word to change to man-to-man coverage in the defensive backfield for this play.

This time, Dokie Williams was along the right sidelines, against the young Harper, who was stride for stride with the Raider wide receiver when Plunkett unleashed one of his alley-oop style passes.

But the ball was short, and Harper, his back to the passer, had a moment of confusion as Williams, instead of striding out after the pass, slowed and slipped back inside of him.

Quickly, Williams had the ball, Harper was too late to recover and missed the tackle--much as his predecessor Minnifield had done earlier on the other side of the field--and Williams was in the end zone with a 43-yard scoring pass that, all things considered, clinched the victory for Los Angeles.

“I had kind of anticipated a go pattern,” said Harper, whose previous NFL game experience had been mostly limited to the role of fifth back in other team’s obvious passing situations. He was, in the parlance of the NFL, the Browns’ nickel back.

“All of a sudden,” Harper continued, “he slowed up, and before I figured out what had happened, it was over. I guess it was just one of those things. Later, when I asked some of our guys along the sideline, they said they didn’t think Plunkett did that on purpose. They said it was just a lousy pass.”

Dixon, the other cornerback, would beg to differ with Harper.

“Our coaches talked about that sort of play with Plunkett,” Dixon said. “He throws it up there and it looks like a punk. But the receiver will pick up on that faster than the defender. The coaches told us, against Plunkett, you’ve got to be turning your head more.”

Williams’ second scoring pass, against the player who had replaced the player he made his first scoring catch against, gave the Raiders control of the game back at 24-14.

The domino that began on the first play had been completed.

The Browns’ defensive backfield that lost the battle to Jim Plunkett Sunday was the defensive backfield that included, until this season, Don Rogers. Rogers, the former UCLA star, was the Browns’ free safety. He was, with some competition from Dixon, the star player in that group.

Last June, on the day before he was to be married in his hometown of Sacramento to Leslie Nlson, Rogers died of a drug overdose.

Last Monday night, the Browns beat the Miami Dolphins, 26-16. The Cleveland defensive backfield, led by Dixon, had dedicated its efforts in that game to the memory of Rogers. They did so because the last game Rogers had played in had been against Miami.

In attendance at the game, at the request of and as guests of Dixon and the defensive backfield, was Leslie Nelson.