Laterally Speaking, It Was Clay’s Play : AFC championship: Browns’ linebacker almost cost his team a playoff berth, but then he made the game-saving interception against the Bills.

Long-suffering Cleveland Brown fans, who still talk about the Drive and the Fumble, infamous plays that knocked their beloved Dawgs out of the Super Bowl, have a new topic of conversation this season: the Lateral.

Linebacker Clay Matthews of the Browns scooped up a fumble and headed for the goal line in the fourth quarter of their last regular-season game at Houston. A posse of Oilers in pursuit, Matthews tried to lateral--to, of all people, Chris Pike, a lumbering defensive tackle at 6-feet-8 and 290 pounds.

The ball never got to Pike.

It sailed over his head. The Oilers recovered and scored on the next play to take a 20-17 lead.

This time, though, the Browns came back to win, 24-20, as tailback Kevin Mack scored with 39 seconds left.

That was a saving touchdown for Matthews. If the Browns had lost, they would have been eliminated from the playoffs.

“If we’d lost, I would have put Clay on the propeller for the plane ride back to Cleveland,” Brown Coach Bud Carson said.

Said Matthews’ father, Clay Sr.: “I almost died when I saw the lateral, I really did. I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, there goes his whole career on one lousy play.’

“When they scored and won, I knew he was the most relieved guy in the whole stadium.”

After the victory over the Oilers, which gave the Browns the AFC Central championship, Matthews wore a big smile as he left the Astrodome field.

But he has refused to acknowledge that he almost threw away the 1989 playoffs. And he hasn’t grasped the idea that he would have been forever remembered in Cleveland for the Lateral, despite 12 exceptional seasons.

“I can’t say I would have gone around the rest of my life feeling that I had ruined my career if we’d lost,” Matthews said. “But if someone (on the Browns) would have caught it and gone in for a touchdown, I can’t say that I would have gone around thinking that I was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Matthews considers the lateral to have been a smart play.

“It was an unusual play, but for those who have followed my career closely I had lateraled five times before that, including twice in one game, and one went for a touchdown of 60 yards,” Matthews said. “I had one where I intercepted a pass and ran for 36 yards and lateraled to Big Daddy Carl Hairston, who ran for another 40 and a touchdown against Cincinnati in 1987. That was the most talked-about play of the season.

“So, when you’re five for five on laterals, it made perfect sense to me to go six for six. Obviously, it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. But not everything does.”

When the Browns returned to practice after the Houston game, Matthews arrived wearing a T-shirt with the inscription: “No Brains, No Headache.”

“I don’t have a headache and some people are making the case that I don’t have any brains,” Matthews told Cleveland reporters. “I guess the smart thing to do would have been to fall down.”

Matthews did that smart thing after intercepting a pass with three seconds remaining to preserve the Browns’ 34-30 win over the Buffalo Bills last weekend. That victory propelled the Browns into the AFC championship game for the third time in the last four years.

Had Carson considered that Matthews might lateral after the interception?

“Clay wasn’t going to lateral that one,” Carson said. “I had a gun on him and he wasn’t going to get a chance.”

And why didn’t Matthews try another lateral?

“Because I didn’t know where the Buffalo guys were,” he said. “If I had caught it in an open space, I might have faked a couple of laterals and then fallen down just to give everybody a little jazz.”

Until that interception, running back Thurman Thomas had been beating Matthews all afternoon, having caught catching 13 passes for 150 yards and a touchdown. But on the big play, Matthews stepped in front of Thomas and intercepted quarterback Jim Kelly’s pass for his first postseason interception.

Big plays are nothing new to Matthews, who has made a lot of them since joining the Browns. The first linebacker selected in the 1978 NFL draft, Matthews has become probably the best linebacker in Browns’ history.

An All-American inside linebacker at USC, Matthews was moved to outside linebacker in Cleveland. And there he has flourished, averaging 86 tackles a season. He also has rung up 51 sacks, third best in club history.

Although Matthews had to adjust to a new defensive system under Carson, who switched the Browns from a 3-4 alignment to a 4-3, he had an extraordinary season and made the Pro Bowl for the third consecutive year.

Matthews’ freedom as a pass rusher was restricted in Carson’s structured defensive system. He was moved from the right side, where he was free to rush the passer, having only a blocking back to deal with, to the left side of the defense, where he lines up over the tight end.

Matthews, who said he thinks sacks are the ultimate for a linebacker, had just three of them this season.

“When you’ve been fortunate to play as long as I have, one of the last areas where you can still brainstorm and show some creativity is the pass rush,” Matthews said. “When you’re covering someone (in zone pass coverage) you’re limited in what you can do. When you play the run it’s almost like you see the stimulus and react.

“But in pass rush, there are a thousand different ways you can to try to get to the quarterback. It’s probably the last area of creativity left on the football field defensively. “I was disappointed that I wasn’t involved in the rush as much as I had been in the past, but we don’t always get what we want. We’ve been successful this year so onward and upward.”

Ozzie Newsome, the Browns’ tight end, and Matthews are the senior players with the Browns. Although Newsome, 33, has said that this is his final season, Matthews still approaches football with youthful zeal. Matthews, 33, has more kid in him than most rookies fresh out of college and he admits it.

In the final year of his contract, he cringed at the mention of retirement.

“I’ll keep playing as long as it’s still fun,” Matthews said. “One of these days when I grow up, I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to do for a living.”

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

Although he has spent his entire pro career in Cleveland, Matthews seems as misplaced in Cleveland as Howard the Duck, who, in a movie, landed there from outer space. Not many Clevelanders, for instance, have taken acting lessons and appeared on a platform with President Bush. Matthews received a lot of negative mail after he and several teammates had endorsed Bush during the 1988 election.

“He’s just a California flake,” said Tony Grossi, a sportswriter who covers the Browns for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He’s so atypical from Clevelanders that it’s amazing that he’s played here for 12 years. He has no conception of what ‘Cleveland blue collar’ is all about.”

As soon as the season ends, Matthews escapes to his home in Agoura Hills, where his idea of a good time is playing basketball on the regulation court in his backyard.

He doesn’t return to Cleveland until training camp opens, and even though he doesn’t participate in the Browns’ off-season conditioning program, he always arrives at camp in top shape. He has lowered his time in the 40-yard dash for the last three seasons while adding 20 pounds of muscle.

But Matthews is hardly a slick Hollywood creation who dresses in three-piece suits and drives an expensive foreign car.

He owns the same 1973 Mercury Capri that he has driven back and forth from California to Cleveland ever since he was drafted. The odometer stopped at 89,000 miles five years ago. And although he has grown wealthy in the Southern California real estate market, he doesn’t flaunt his wealth, dressing in T-shirts and jeans. Long-time friends say they have never seen him in a suit and tie.

Matthews’ life revolves around his family, which includes five children, Jennifer, 8; Kyle, 7; Brian, 4; Clay, 3, and Casey, 11 months.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

William Clay Matthews Jr. might have been born to play in the NFL.

His father, also Clay, played offensive tackle, tight end and linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers in 1950 and from 1953-55. His younger brother, Bruce, is an offensive tackle for the Houston Oilers. Clay and Bruce will play together in the Pro Bowl for the second consecutive season.

But the elder Matthews didn’t push his sons into football.

“I didn’t try to take out any of my frustrations or lack of success on them,” he said. “I made a deal with them. I told them, ‘If you ask me something, I’ll be glad to help you, but if you don’t ask, I’ll assume you know what you’re doing.’

“They both asked for help in the same way, and it really surprised me. It had nothing to do with technique. Both of them were high school All-Americans and pretty highly publicized.

“And strangely enough, both of them came to me and said, ‘I’d like to go to USC, do you think I can play there?’ And I told them, ‘If you’re going to be the best, you might as well play with the best; and if you think that USC is the best that there is, why don’t you go find out?’ ”

Clay and Bruce became All-Americans at USC. After graduating from USC in 1983, Bruce was selected in the first round by the Oilers. The Matthews brothers have played against one another twice a year since.

Whom does their father root for when the Oilers play the Browns?

“I answer that question every year,” Matthews said. “When a reporter from Houston called me this year I said, ‘Aren’t you tired of writing the same story seven years in a row?’ And he said, ‘No, people forget about it from one year to the next.’

“So I’m going to give you the same answer I gave him. I really don’t know who I’m pulling for when they play. I can rationalize it in my mind and say that I’m pulling for Clay because he’s in his 12th year and Bruce is only in his seventh year and I want Clay to go to the Super Bowl.

“But what really happens is that as the game goes on, I pull for whoever gets behind. I once did an interview in the Astrodome and I said that I was the only person in the Dome who can’t lose.” Although the senior Matthews is proud of sons Clay and Bruce, he’s even prouder of his two other sons, twins Bradley and Raymond, 30.

Although retarded, Bradley and Raymond held jobs and maintained their own apartments. Both excelled in the Special Olympics. Bradley was the state swimming champion at 25 meters, and Raymond was the state champion at 50 meters.

“If they hadn’t been retarded, we’d have four Matthews in the NFL,” Clay said of his brothers.