Why Do We Forget the Greatness of Otto Graham?

The next time someone throws together a Top 10 list of pro football’s best-ever quarterbacks, look for Hall-of-Famer Otto Graham. Guaranteed, you won’t find him among the top five, and you might not find him period … which is more than a mistake.

It’s a travesty.

Yet it happens over and over again, and I don’t get it. All the guy did was win seven league championships, over 80 percent of his games and multiple MVP awards. Sound familiar? It should. Tom Brady produced virtually the same resume, and we declared him the greatest quarterback who ever lived.

But Graham? Crickets.

I’m serious. When former NFL quarterback Chris Simms, now with NBC Sports, in 2019 put together his Top Ten list of quarterbacks, he named Aaron Rodgers -- not Brady -- No. 1. Then he chose John Elway second, with Brady third, and you can imagine how that went over. The pushback was immediate, as it should’ve been. But wait, it gets better. Guess where Otto Graham was?

He wasn’t. Neither he nor John Unitas was included. You heard me. Did … not … make … the … cut.

There are a lot of things in this life I can’t fathom. Lifting an airplane off the ground is one. Sending people in a tin can to the moon and back or surfing giant waves off Portugal are a couple of others. But omitting Unitas and Graham from any list of Best-Ever QBs? Yep, it just passed the audition, too.

It’s not that Graham was simply great. It’s that nobody was greater when he played. That would be 1946-55 when he quarterbacked the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and, later, the NFL. He went to 10 league championship games in 10 years, won seven times, and once went 29 consecutive starts without losing.

But we’re just getting started. Here are some of Graham’s other accomplishments:

-- He produced a 105-17-4 record with Cleveland, a .810 winning percentage that is the NFL’s best ever.

-- He won seven league championships in half the time (10 years) as Brady (20).

-- He led the Browns to a 15-0 record in 1948.

-- He was a three-time MVP winner in his six years in the NFL, including the last season he played.

-- He holds the NFL record for career yards per pass attempt (8.63).

-- In six NFL seasons, he was a six-time All-Pro.

-- In his 10 years of pro play, he was voted all-league in every season but one.

-- In six years of NFL play, he twice led it in passing yards.

-- Twice he led it in passer rating.

-- Once he led it in touchdown passes.

-- Three times he led it in completion percentage.

-- He was 9-3 in the playoffs.

-- He never missed a game.

-- He held the pro football record for career rushing touchdowns (44) until it was broken by Cam Newton.

-- He’s a member of the NFL’s 75^th and 100^th anniversary teams.

Under Graham, the Browns were an astounding 52-4-3 in the AAFC, winning all four league titles before joining the NFL in 1950. Their first game was vs. defending league-champion Philadelphia, and a blowout was expected. In fact, Washington owner George Preston Marshall had said the worst NFL team could beat the best of the AAFC. NFL loyalists lined up behind him, predicting a mismatch, and they were right. 

Cleveland won 35-10, with Graham completing 21 of 28 passes for 346 yards.

The Browns went on to win the league championship that season and appear in every NFL title game for six straight years … or until Graham retired.

Now, let’s say someone today reprises Otto Graham’s record. He never misses a league championship game in his career… wins seven titles and 81 percent of his starts … and walks off with multiple MVP awards. What would we’d think of him? You already know. Because we extol Tom Brady for all the right reasons.

So why don’t we do that with Otto Graham? He was Tom Brady before Tom Brady.

I don’t care what his completion percentage or passer ratings were or that he didn’t throw for a gazillion yards. It was a different era, and all Otto Graham did was win. AAFC. NFL. It didn’t matter. The point is the guy won at every level of play. Yet he continues to get kicked to the curb when we talk about great quarterbacks, and I’m still looking for an explanation.

Either people don’t know what he did or, worse, they don’t care.

“People don’t vote for him because they haven’t seen him,” said former league executive Upton Bell, son of former NFL commissioner Bert Bell.

Upton saw him. And he knows what he witnessed.

“I saw Otto in his first NFL training camp,” he said, “and I thought right away he was something special. Even though Paul Brown called all the plays, Otto Graham was really Paul Brown intellectually. He knew how to pick on a team’s weakness. Like Brady, he could cut up a defense piece by piece.

“All his throws were accurate. His timing was amazing. He really ran an early version of the two-minute offense. And he rarely lost a big game. In fact, he went to 10 league championship games in a time when, if you didn’t win your division, you were out. Paul Brown never won (a title) after he left. If he were playing today, Otto Graham would be Brady.”

After winning the NFL championship in 1954, a 55-10 rout where Graham threw for three TDs and ran for three others, he retired … though not for long. Unhappy with Graham’s replacements the following preseason, Brown coaxed Graham out of retirement … and you can guess what happened. After losing the season opener, the Browns went 9-1-1 the rest of the way.

Then they hammered the L.A. Rams 38-10 in the championship game, with Graham throwing for two scores and running for two more in what then-Rams’-coach Sid Gillman called “a perfect day.” The crowd at the L.A. Coliseum must have agreed. It gave him a standing ovation when he was pulled in the fourth quarter.

He never played again.

In his last curtain call, Otto Graham won his seventh league championship, was the NFL’s MVP and passing leader and was named recipient of the Hickok Belt, awarded each year to the best professional athlete.

And the Browns? Without Graham, they finished 5-7 in 1956, their first losing season ever, while Paul Brown – regarded as one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history – didn’t win another NFL championship. Otto Graham was everything you hear in connection with today’s elite quarterbacks -- a generational talent who was smart, accurate, tough and multi-dimensional.

Best of all: He almost never lost.

Analytics acolytes can dissect his numbers, and tell us what’s find missing from his game. But I don’t care. They didn’t see him play. They don’t appreciate how poles apart the NFL of his era was from today. And they don’t recognize that, in the end, all the figures, parabolas and bell curves to which they pledge allegiance don’t matter.

Only one thing does.

“You play to win the game,” as Herm Edwards reminded us.

Otto Graham did nothing but win the games. That’s why he was known as “Automatic Otto.” Remember that the next time you find his name missing from a list of football’s best and brightest quarterbacks. Otto Graham deserved every accolade bestowed on him during a storied career.

What he doesn’t deserve is to be forgotten.