Ed Puskas: Kardiac Kids still have our hearts

Sam Rutigliano coached football in parts of six decades from high school to college to the NFL.

If the former head coach of the Cleveland Browns has any regrets, the biggest has to be that the blonde in the mezzanine section at Municipal Stadium wasn’t on the receiving end of Brian Sipe’s final pass in the AFC Divisional playoff game on Jan. 4, 1981.

Rutigliano, the head coach of the 1980 “Kardiac Kids” Browns, has always said that’s who he told Sipe to throw the ball to if no one in a brown jersey was open on second down from the Oakland Raiders’ 13-yard line.

The Browns trailed the Raiders, 14-12, but were in field goal range with a second-and-9. But bitter cold and wind had made kicking an adventure that day and while Rutigliano had faith in kicker Don Cockroft, he also had the NFL’s Most Valuable Player that season at quarterback.

“I told Brian we were going to run on first down and run on third down,” Rutigliano said Saturday during an appearance with Cockroft and former Browns running back Greg Pruitt at Firebirds Wood Fired Grill at the Eastwood Mall in Niles.

“On second down, I’m going to the Most Valuable Player in the league to try to win it. If things got tight, I said to throw it to the blonde in the mezzanine,” Rutigliano said.

Instead, Sipe — who had led the Browns to so many comebacks and narrow victories — tried to get the ball to a young tight end named Ozzie Newsome in the back of the end zone.

But Raiders safety Mike Davis stepped in front of Newsome, intercepted Sipe’s pass and provided Browns fans a glimpse of what was to come for the next generation or two.

It was a crushing defeat for Cleveland and its fans, including a future sports editor who has never quite gotten over the play known as Red Right 88 — even after 35 years. I still know all the words to “The Twelve Days of a Cleveland Brown Christmas,” and it’s been decades since anyone saw Dave Logan leaping, Doug Dieken blocking or [Tom] DeLeone a-hiking.

I hadn’t watched the play on video in years, but seeing it again brought the memories flooding back. I was so sure the Browns were going to beat the Raiders. They had a way of pulling out wins in the final moments. They weren’t called the Kardiac Kids for nothing.

Pruitt thought the same thing. His catch and run helped move the Browns into the shadow of the Raiders’ end zone, then he went to the heated bench to wait out the game’s final moments.

“I’m pretty much thinking it’s over,” Pruitt said. “We were making plans about what kind of party we were gonna have.”

It was cold, which doesn’t really do justice to the conditions that day. It was frigid. When you sat on the heated bench, Pruitt said, you could hook your heels into slots underneath the bench. But that left your toes out in the cold. So he stood with his back to the field and was warming his toes when Davis intercepted the pass.

“I didn’t see the play, but I could see the reaction on the face of the guy I was standing there talking to,” Pruitt said. “It was almost in slow-motion, like ‘The Longest Yard.’ ”

It was the final game of Cockroft’s 13-year NFL career, all with the Browns.

“I still take pride in being 17 for 17 in my career on game-winning kicks. Would I have been 17 for 18 [or 18 for 18]? We’ll never know,” Cockroft said with a smile.

Pruitt knows something he still finds bitterly ironic — even now.

The Browns traded him to the Raiders after the 1981 season and the five-time Pro Bowl running back earned a Super Bowl ring with Oakland. Pruitt found out something about Davis when they were teammates from 1982-84.

“Mike Davis can’t catch the ball,” Pruitt said. “In 80-degree weather and 7-on-7 drills, the guy couldn’t hold onto the ball at all.”

A lot of time has passed. but the Kardiac Kids are still near and dear to the hearts of Cleveland fans of a certain age. A steady stream of them moved through Firebirds for three hours on Saturday to meet Rutigliano, Pruitt and Cockroft, pose for photos with them and get their autographs. Some of them left with personalized copies of the coffee table book Cockroft and co-author Bob Moon wrote about the 1980 Browns — “The 1980 Kardiac Kids: Our Untold Stories.”

“Anyone who lived through that era remembers that season so specifically,” said Cockroft, who spent four years writing the book from more than 140 hours of recorded interviews with every living player and coach from the team.

“It wasn’t until I wrote the book and talked to fans that I realized what the team did for Cleveland. The city was hurting in 1980. The economy was down and the team brought hope to the town.”

That’s part of why the Kardiac Kids — who never won a playoff game — are still among the most beloved teams in Browns history.

Rutigliano is 81 now and comfortably retired, although he does radio and TV spots. Cockroft is 70 and Pruitt is 63. The game itself may have passed them by, but the memories are still vivid.

Even Red Right 88, the one moment the old Browns wish they could forget. Rutigliano does his best.

“What I learned in five decades as a coach is to have selective amnesia,” he said.

But even Red Right 88 couldn’t erase the 1980 season from the memories of fans Cockroft, Pruitt and Rutigliano called the best in the NFL.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.