Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I think that Marion Motley is one of the greatest football players of all time. He could do it all. His 5.7 rushing yards per attempt is the best in history and he blocked like a demon. As a fullback, he should be ranked at or near the very top when you consider both his running and blocking.

He was also a great linebacker. His coach, Paul Brown, said that Motley could have made the Hall of Fame just as a linebacker if he did not play fullback. I guess that should qualify him as one of the greatest players ever.

For 5 years (1946-50), Marion Motley was the best fullback in football. In 1951, disaster happened. His knee was badly injured in training camp. After leading the NFL in rushing in 1950 with an average rush of 5.8 yards and a total of 810 yards (in a 12 game season), Motley was not even Cleveland's second leading rusher in 1951 (Dub Jones and Ken Carpenter were the Browns leading rushers that year). Because of his knee injuries, Marion was no longer in his prime. He was also on the wrong side of 30. He only gained 273 yards on 61 carries in 1951.

Motley came back a little in 1952, gaining 444 yards on 104 carries. This was 6th best in the league (5th best if the championship game is counted in. Bob "Hunchy" Hoernschemeyer, who was 5th in the league in rushing, also played in the championship for Detroit) 6th best is pretty good when you consider that Motley lost his starting fullback job after 9 games.

Reminds me of something that was said about the boxer Roberto Duran. He was the best in his prime and the best over the hill boxer. In 1952, the past his best Motley was still pretty good. Ironically, after 9 games that year, he was replaced as the starting fullback by Chick Jagade.

I am not about to compare a prime Jagade with a prime Motley, but in 1952, coach Brown apparently felt that Jagade was, at that time, the more effective fullback. Harry "Chick" Jagade was a big, strong player who ran hard and sometimes would knock would be tacklers over (hence the nickname "Jarrin Chick"). He was also a very good blocker, probably the equal of Marion Motley in 1952, if not before.

In the 10th game of 1952, Jarrin Chick got the starting assignment at fullback for the Cleveland Browns. He was kind of sensational gaining 147 yards on 16 carries. Jagade kept up his good work right through the championship game with Detroit when he rushed for 104 yards on 15 carries and scored Cleveland's only touchdown.

I read somewhere that some implied coach Brown did not treat Motley well by replacing him with Jagade. I have to disagree. Yes, Motley was still one of the better fullbacks around the league, even though he was past his prime at 32 with bad knees. Jagade was in his prime at 26, and was very good. If Chick could do a better job than Motley at that point, and Brown must have thought so, then would it have been fair to Jagade and to the team itself to keep playing Marion Motley at fullback out of sentiment and because of what Motley had done for the team in the past?

Motley still got some playing time at fullback and on the goal line defense after losing his starting fullback job to Jagade. In the 1952 title game, Marion broke away for a 41 yard gain late in the game. Unfortunately, Cleveland did not take advantage of this and lost to Detroit that day, 17 to 7. Like I said, despite being past his best with bad knees, Marion Motley was still one of the better fullbacks around the NFL in 1952.

I think its interesting how the good RBs were used in the 50's prior to Jim Brown. The workload was spread out as the best RB on the team wasn't given 20 rushing attempts a game. Even in 1950, when Motley led the NFL in rushing and was clearly still in his prime, he would come in to the game, get 4 straight carries for 40 yards and a TD, and then you wouldn't see him on offense for the next two series. The Rams would do the same thing with Dan Towler...you wouldn't see him for the first quarter and a half, then he'd come in and plow through the defense for 10 yards a pop. Ollie Matson was 6-2, 220 and played in a weird offense with little surrounding talent with the Cards, yet his typical season saw him with 500 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards. You would think the Cardinals would simply hand Matson the ball 25 times a game for lack of any remotely better options.

I'm not sure if coaches were concerned with 'overusing' their best RBs, but even then guys like Matson and McEllhenny were returning kicks and punts and were also major contributors to the passing game. Maybe teams like the Browns, Niners & Rams felt that they had so many good RBs that one guy shouldn't be featured.

I don't know if this happened in football, at that time, but right through to the 1970's, there were more than a few NHL players who used the two intermissions as an opportunity to chain-smoke a few cigarettes before the start of the next period.

I suspect that throughout all the major sports, conditioning -- even under Paul Brown -- was nowhere near what it would be a couple of decades later.

Jeremy Crowhurst wrote:I don't know if this happened in football, at that time, but right through to the 1970's, there were more than a few NHL players who used the two intermissions as an opportunity to chain-smoke a few cigarettes before the start of the next period.

I suspect that throughout all the major sports, conditioning -- even under Paul Brown -- was nowhere near what it would be a couple of decades later.

Good point.

Chick Jagade showed up at the Cleveland Browns training camp in 1951 as a free agent. I don't know if Paul Brown invited him or not. Brown said that he had been impressed by Jagade's reckless style of running when Chick played for the AAFC Baltimore Colts in 1949 as a rookie.

Jagade was a free agent in 1951 because the Baltimore Colts had folded after the 1950 season. Chick Jagade missed the entire 1950 season due to a broken foot. No team drafted him in the 1951 draft (NFL teams were allowed to draft players from the defunct Colts team in the 1951 college draft). Therefore, Jagade was a player without a team.

Chick Jagade made the Browns team despite the 33 player limit and the fact that Cleveland already had fullbacks Marion Motley and Emerson Cole on the team. Chick spent most of the 1951 season playing on the special teams.

Jagade played well on special teams, often getting down the field quickly to make tackles on punt and kickoff returns. In the final regular season game in 1951 against the Eagles, Chick did get some playing time at fullback as Cleveland already had the conference title clinched.

Jagade became the reserve fullback at the early part of the 1952 season. In a game against Detroit, Jim Doran kept getting to Otto Graham with some kind of looping move on the pass rush. Coach Brown put in Jagade to replace Motley at fullback to try to stop Doran from getting to Graham. Seems funny that Marion Motley would ever be taken out of a game due to a blocking problem, but probably because of his knee problems, he wasn't as fast as before and Doran was getting by him.

In the Browns seventh game against the Chicago Cardinals, Brown started Jagade for a few plays and then Motley came in for most of the rest of the game. I read that Brown told Motley that he wanted to start Chick Jagade against the Cards because Chicago was Chick's home town.

In Cleveland's 9th game that year, the Browns lost to the Eagles and Motley did not have a very good game. The following week against Washington, Brown Made Chick Jagade, who had always played well when he did play, the starting fullback. Chick remained the starting fullback the rest of his time with Cleveland.

Chick Jagade gained over 100 yards in both the 1952 and 1953 championship games against the Detroit Lions, but unfortunately for the Browns, they lost both games to Detroit.

In 1954, Chick told coach Brown that he could not play in Cleveland anymore because of commitments to the family business in Chicago, so Brown traded him to the Bears.

Bryan wrote:I think its interesting how the good RBs were used in the 50's prior to Jim Brown. The workload was spread out as the best RB on the team wasn't given 20 rushing attempts a game. Even in 1950, when Motley led the NFL in rushing and was clearly still in his prime, he would come in to the game, get 4 straight carries for 40 yards and a TD, and then you wouldn't see him on offense for the next two series. The Rams would do the same thing with Dan Towler...you wouldn't see him for the first quarter and a half, then he'd come in and plow through the defense for 10 yards a pop. Ollie Matson was 6-2, 220 and played in a weird offense with little surrounding talent with the Cards, yet his typical season saw him with 500 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards. You would think the Cardinals would simply hand Matson the ball 25 times a game for lack of any remotely better options.

I'm not sure if coaches were concerned with 'overusing' their best RBs, but even then guys like Matson and McEllhenny were returning kicks and punts and were also major contributors to the passing game. Maybe teams like the Browns, Niners & Rams felt that they had so many good RBs that one guy shouldn't be featured.

As far as the Cleveland Browns go, they had more weapons and more balance than they did in the Jim Brown era. During the Motley/Jagade years, their passing game was their main weapon with Otto Graham, Dante Lavelli, Mac Speedie, and Dub Jones. They also had some good runners besides Motley/Jagade like Edgar Jones, Ken Carpenter, and Dub Jones. So, they spread the workload around more than later on when Jim Brown was their main weapon.

Jim Brown was Cleveland's main weapon during his years with the Browns (1957-65), but the Cleveland Browns had more balance by 1964 when they had Paul Warfield and Gary Collins as wide receivers and Ernie Green as a very versatile running back to go along with Brown in the Browns backfield. Frank Ryan was also a very effective quarterback right through the 1966 season.

The Browns still were balanced after Jim Browns retirement to make movies, with Leroy Kelly taking up a lot of the slack for Brown. They also got tight end Milt Morin in 1966, another good one. In 1968, Gary Collins missed most of the season due to an injury, but Warfield and Morin took up some of the slack, and new Browns quarterback Bill Nelson probably went more to his backs, Kelly and Green, with his passing.

So, from 1964 through 1969, the Cleveland offense had plenty of balance.

Just my opinion, but I think that Jim Brown was a better football player than he was an actor.

From 1954 on, I believe that the Cleveland Browns changed their blocking, with their fullbacks Mo Bassett in 1954 and Ed Modzelewski in 1955 and 1956 running toward the sidelines rather than blocking on pass plays. Of course, running to the sidelines made the other teams have to use a man to cover them.

Maybe Bassett and Modzelewski were not the blockers that Motley and Jagade were, but I don't know about that. Anyway, the Cleveland Browns did win NFL Championships in 1954 and 1955, so the change in blocking did not hurt them very much. Like I said, the defense still had to cover them (Bassett or Modzelewski) or else they would make an easy first down with the screen pass.