We’re celebrating the five scariest Cleveland Browns this Halloween
When you’re playing the Cleveland Browns, even in more recent years, you’re not usually thinking about the game-breaking, game-changing players that you have to gameplan for. The Browns, unfortunately, aren’t always known for such types.
In more recent years that’s changed, but historically, at least since 1999, the Browns have had very few players who have struck the heart and soul of an opposing team. That doesn’t mean they haven’t had any, however.
So this Halloween, we’re taking a look at the players that intimated opposing teams, if only for a few seasons. The type of players that when teams sat down to gameplan for, they took extra long talking about that specific player.
Honorable Mention: Joshua Cribbs
Josh Cribbs gets the honorable mention nod for a variety of reasons. The first reason why he only gets the honorable mention nod isn’t a great reason, however. Cribbs was great with the ball in his hands but as a quarterback turned receiver, he was not great at catching passes or running routes. So the Browns mostly used him as a return specialist or in gimmicky plays on offense.
That limitation hurt his overall evaluation on this list. Still, we’d be hard-pressed not to include him at all, because when the ball did end up in his hands, regardless of where or when on the field it happened, Cribbs was dynamic enough to make the most out of the moment.
Myles Garrett
Of all the more recent Cleveland Browns, very few have the look of Myles Garrett. He’s one of the biggest players the team has ever had, and when you couple that with how fast he is, it makes for one nightmare-inducing player. Garrett, who is one of the greatest pass rushers in franchise history, is the team’s all-time sack leader.
His ability to get around the edge and get to the quarterback is among the best in the league. While some do talk about his limitations elsewhere, even if Garrett can only do one thing very well, that’s still more than most former Browns can say over the last 23 seasons.
Garrett’s mystique is also something that has helped give the defensive end a unique and fearful demeanor. Garrett is viewed by many as a unique person in the world of football, enjoying things like poetry and art. Not something often found in an NFL player.
His mystique is even further improved upon when you realize that during Halloween he puts out some of the most impressive decorations imaginable, oftentimes using the quarterbacks he’s played against or will play against as his inspiration. It’s got to be unsettling when you see a man, who is going to try and tackle you as hard as he can, put your name on a tombstone.
Plus he’s known for using equipment as a weapon, so you know you need to be ready to duck around him already.
Nick Chubb
As with Myles Garrett, Nick Chubb is a current Browns player whose doing his work to improve his legacy in real-time. Unlike Garrett, Chubb is the exact opposite. Garrett is known for big grand displays of bravado, saying things better left unsaid and trying to encave another man’s skull with a blunt object.
Chubb is a blunt object, in the best possible ways. See, Chubb isn’t Garrett he’s not someone whose motivated by his feelings. In fact, besides winning, we don’t know what motivates Chubb. That’s what makes him so dangerous and scary. Why does he power through opposing players? Is it rage? Is it the competition? Does he even see the other players or does he think he’s running through the mud?
That type of unrelenting, Terminator-like vibe is what makes Chubb so dang scary. He’s not someone who gets rattled, he’s not someone who gets shook and he’s not someone who has a history of wilting. If he were Indiana Jones and a giant boulder came tumbling towards him, more than likely Chubb would shift his weight ever slightly, clip the boulder at the edge, break the arm tackle and score a touchdown.
Chubb with a ball in his hands may be the most horrifying sight of them all.
Joe Thomas
When it comes to Joe Thomas, there was arguably no better offensive lineman in the game of football for a decade. The left tackle anchored the Cleveland Browns’ offensive line through thick and thin from 2007 to his retirement in 2017. Across 11 seasons, the Browns’ greatest linemen of all time went to 10 Pro Bowls and made eight All-Pro teams, but an injury in his 11th season made him re-evaluate his career and ultimately put his health first and said goodbye to the game.
Before he said goodbye, Thomas had the reputation of being the hardest lineman in the league to beat, period. Yes, the Browns were a dumpster fire the entire time he was on the team, save for his rookie season, but he stayed and dominated. He was never accused of taking plays off, nor was he someone who ever was very vocal about his unhappiness.
It was almost like he relished in the chaos. You’d be hard-pressed to find a man who is more comfortable in the chaos than Thomas and that should give anyone thinking about challenging pause for concern. He willingly sat through year after year with the Browns, and actually enjoyed himself. If you can go through all that yearly trauma and keep coming back for more, it’s fair to say you’re terrifying.
Jamir Miller
Before there was Joe Thomas, there Was Jamir Miller, the Browns’ first Pro Bowler since their return in 1999. The outside linebacker from Arizona was seen by many as a bust with the Cardinals, barely making a name for himself and struggling for most of his time there. Yet, when he arrived in Cleveland, Miller became the team’s best player without a doubt.
The pass-rushing linebacker became a force to be reckoned with he joined the Cleveland Browns in 1999. As the lone star on the team, Millers held his bust label in Arizona and became the Browns’ leader on defense, making plays all over the field for three years. He was second on the team in tackles in 1999 and 2000, second to Wali Rainer in 1999, but in 2001 he led the team in tackles with Dwayne Rudd and led the team in solo tackles and sacks.
In doing so he earned his first Pro Bowl nod and became the team’s first Pro Bowler of the new era. He was poised to help the Browns contend in 2002, the first year the team would make the playoffs, and who knows what that team had been like had Miller not suffered a catastrophic injury in the preseason, ending his career.
Had the Browns had Miller in 2002, it’s very possible the team finishes better than 9-7, and it’s very likely they defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs.
Phil Dawson
It’s really unbelievable but if you’re an opposing team, the last thing you’d ever want to see during his time with Cleveland was No. 4. Phil Dawson was a legend for the simple fact that he was able to do his job in easily the worst stadium in the NFL for kicking. As if he were a warlock, Dawson knew how to play against the elements in a stadium that have taken the very best the league had to offer and removed a piece of their confidence.
Not Dawson, however. If the Cleveland Browns stadium in the winter was a dragon, then Dawson was the dragon slayer. Whether it was hitting the field goal post for a game-winning kick, or being able to defy the sheer force of the wind alone, Dawson made kicking among the most exciting times a game could have.
Dawson was someone who could not be stopped, not if he didn’t want to be and the thing that made him most dangerous, he was timeless. Dawson kicked for a long time, longer than most people thought possible and even though he left Cleveland, he still possessed that dragon-slaying ability, no matter what stadium he was playing in on that given Sunday.