Browns-Broncos Could Be a Dog Fight : Both Teams Can Be Disparaged, but They’re Still Battling for AFC Title

Give us two of your poor, your tired, your huddled masses and we’ll hold today’s AFC championship game.

Someone has to win, even if the best the conference can do is today’s match between the Denver Broncos, who tumbled through the second half of the National Football league season, and the Cleveland Browns, proud and improbable comeback winners of a playoff game for the first time in 17 years.

The respect the AFC enjoys was reflected in the oddsmakers’ ranking of the 10 playoff entries:

1. NFC East champion (New York Giants) 5-2.

2. NFC Central champion (Chicago Bears) 3-1.

3. AFC West champion (Broncos) 7-2.

4. NFC West champion (San Francisco 49ers) 4-1.

5. AFC Central champion (Browns) 9-2.

6. NFC wild card 1 (Washington Redskins) 7-1.

7. NFC wild card 2 (Rams) 8-1.

Three AFC teams brought up the rear. The Broncos and the Browns were rated as high as they were only because one AFC team was guaranteed a berth in the Super Bowl and the NFC powers were killing one another off.

Of course, there is a different perspective here. This is dog country, in honor of the Brown defense that named itself the Dawgs two years ago in an attempt to gain an identity. Dogging someone is player slang for giving him the worst possible time. Fans now bark, wear dog masks--one was spotted last week with a doghouse hat--and pelt the field and the occasional opponent with dog biscuits.

Before the Browns returned from their week of practice at Vero Beach, Fla., the office of Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich warned them of an impending crowd-control problem at Hopkins International Airport. The Browns not only kept their arrival time secret, they also finally decided to fly into a smaller airport.

“Coming back from a win, you wouldn’t do that,” General Manager Ernie Accorsi said. “But we haven’t even played the game. We can’t put our players through that.”

There was a time this season when you couldn’t have written this off as two bargain-basement contenders, when the Broncos ranked up there with anyone. But not recently.

After an 8-1 start, they finished 3-4.

Their running game, No. 1 in the league after the first month, finished No. 20.

Their best runner, Sammy Winder, who carried the ball on 53% of their rushes, averaged 3.3 yards a carry.

That was terrific compared to what he averaged the last seven games--2.3.

In the first nine games, John Elway’s ratio of touchdown passes to interceptions was 13-4. In the last seven, it was 6-9.

The defense, which featured a new attacking style, settled back into its old bend-but-don’t-break mode. It totalled 49 sacks, two more than in 1985. Bronco linebacker coach Myrel Moore even wondered out loud if his boss, defensive coordinator Joe Collier, had reined the unit in intentionally, to save some tricks for the playoffs. Collier said he had not.

The regular season ended with one of those Doom Dome numbers, a 41-16 pasting by the Seahawks in Seattle. The Broncos were so shaken, they had a team meeting to discuss the importance of the playoffs. If you don’t already know you’re in trouble, that’s how you find out--having to have a meeting before the playoffs.

“I wish I knew the answer,” Denver Coach Dan Reeves said last week. “I think we got a lead in our division and maybe didn’t play as hard as we should have.

“But I think we played some awful good football teams. And if you don’t play your best against the good teams, you can get embarrassed. That’s what happened to us late in the season.

“We lost a game at home to San Diego where we didn’t score a touchdown. We lost some games that were close. We got embarrassed a couple of times.”

What happened was that a lot of things caught up with them.

Reeves, who has acknowledged the lack of a dominant runner, had hoped to get one in Steve Sewell, a No. 1 pick from Oklahoma in 1985. All Sewell has developed into is a pass-catching specialist.

Reeves wanted to build up his undersized offensive line but could not. Rookie tackle Jim Juriga was hurt in the exhibition season. Mark Cooper, a No. 2 draft choice in 1983, was put at right guard but could not hold it, starting on opening day when the Raiders’ Bill Pickel burned him around the edges. The 36-year-old Paul Howard had to be thrown back in.

So the running game went back to what it was last season--inadequate. The pressure settled in on Elway, who as usual tried to turn the tide by himself.

Then there was a little matter of the schedule. The AFC West teams were matched against the NFC East, a problem for them all. The Raiders started with losses at Denver, at Washington and at home to the Giants and complained bitterly about having to play them all early.

The Broncos got knocked around at the other end, when they were obliged to close with the Bengals and Redskins at home, and the Chiefs, Seahawks and Giants on the road.

They managed to win the two home games and the division title, but they lost the home-field advantage for this game.

Because of that, they’re three-point underdogs. Welcome to the dog pound.

You could not say the Browns had an easier time, not after they lost to then-winless Green Bay here in the seventh game.

That dropped them to 4-3. A week later, they trailed Minnesota, 17-3, at the half before their special teams pulled it out with a blocked punt for a touchdown, a fumble recovery on a kickoff and a block of a Viking field goal try.

After that, however, they lost one game--to the Raiders, 27-14--the rest of the season.

Of course, they did not play another team that would make the playoffs the rest of the season, either. Their big test was at Cincinnati, against the Jekyll-Hyde Bengals. The Browns throttled them, 34-3.

Appearances notwithstanding, the Browns have a much-improved offense and a rebuilt defense.

The offense revolves around 23-year-old Bernie Kosar, whose running style has become a comedic straight-line for the nation’s press. The receivers are slow route runners, and the scheme has been a topic of debate for two seasons and two offensive coordinators. Kosar wants to throw long, but offensive coordinator Lindy Infante wants him to keep throwing underneath.

However the bottom line is the NFL’s No. 9 offense. Kosar may look funny, but if you will notice, he generally stumbles out of harm’s way and dumps off one of those cotton balls to someone. He threw 10 interceptions all season, remarkable for a quarterback piling up 3,854 yards. He was sacked 39 times, a middle-of-the-pack number and not bad considering his lack of mobility.

The defense? It has got the nickname and the tradition--three straight top 10 rankings--but this season it came in at No. 19 and a solid one at that, 18th against the run, 15th against the pass.

The strengths of the unit are its Raider-style man-to-man cornerbacks and its outside linebacker tandem, but the Don Rogers tragedy took a budding star at free safety. The Browns gave up on inside linebacker Tom Cousineau and his big salary and let prodigal outside linebacker Chip Banks hold out all through camp.

After the season started, they picked up Ray Ellis, a refugee from Buddy Ryan’s Philadelphia Eagles who wound up at strong safety. They opened the season with cornerback Hanford Dixon, who will be a Pro Bowl starter, and outside linebacker Clay Matthews, a two-time Pro Bowl player, playing hurt.

The defense was supposed to hold the club together while Kosar was learning Infante’s offense, but the special teams did that.

Led by a 143-pound ex-USFL return man named Gerald (Ice Cube, since shortened to Cube) McNeil, they set up or scored 62 points, which is not bad on a team that scored 391 points altogether. Special teams made the difference in early victories over the Lions and Vikings, or the Browns’ 5-3 start might have been 3-5.

OK, so they both had their troubles during the season. How did the playoffs go?

On its home field, Cleveland trailed the Jets, 20-10, with 4 minutes 8 seconds left before Kosar rallied them to a tie and victory in the second overtime period. He would have been in deeper trouble if Mark Gastineau had not taken him off the hook on third and 24 by slamming his helmet into the middle of his back after the ball was gone, incurring a roughing-the-passer penalty.

Said Elway last week, laughing: “I wonder if the Browns sent Mark Gastineau a Christmas present.”

Elway had his own problems. The Broncos trailed the Patriots, 17-13, in the fourth quarter before getting a freebie. Not only did Don Blackmon jump offside, the rest of the Patriot rush watched Elway forgo the intended short pass and take his nothing-to-lose shot at the bomb, which Vance Johnson caught for the game winner.

The Patriots had time to come back, but Irving Fryar fielded a punt at his two-yard line, setting up Rulon Jones’ safety.

So here they are.

It is a match-up as much as anything of the quarterbacks: Elway, older, more gifted and still more boyish, against Kosar, who is more limited and much more controlled, not to forget steadier. There is going to be a kid quarterback in Pasadena, and a team you could call a survivor. They just have to figure out which of them it will be.

AFC Notes

The Broncos have won the last seven meetings, but the teams have not played since 1984, pre-Bernie Kosar. . . . Hanford Dixon and inside linebacker Eddie Johnson did not practice in Florida because of ankle injuries, but Coach Marty Schottenheimer thinks they will play today. The Broncos have lost guard Paul Howard, so Mark Cooper is back in there. . . . Both teams made roster changes Saturday, the Broncos activating tight end Clarence Kay and the Browns bringing back running back Earnest Byner.