Otto Graham

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography, (2003)

Otto Graham

Otto Graham (born 1921) was one of professionalfootball's greatest quarterbacks and most accurate passers. In every one of his ten seasons with the Cleveland Browns, he led his team to the league championship game.

"Otto was my greatest player," said legendary Cleveland coach Paul Brown. "He had the finest peripheral vision I had ever seen, and that is a big factor in a quarterback. He was a tremendous playmaker. He had unusual eye-and-hand coordination, and he was bigger and faster than you thought."

All-around Talent

Otto Graham was a huge baby, weighing 14 pounds and 12 ounces when he was born on December 6, 1921 in Evanston, Illinois. He was one of four sons of two schoolteachers who both loved music and encouraged their children to play instruments. Young Otto became proficient in violin, cornet, piano, and French horn. At Waukegan High School, he became Illinois French horn state champion and played in a brass sextet that won the national championship. That same year, at age 16, he was the state's basketball scoring champion and named to the All-State basketball squad. The next year, 1938, Graham was named to the All-State football squad.

Graham's athletic versatility flowered at Northwestern University, which he entered on a full basketball scholarship. Nicknamed "Automatic Otto," Graham became the basketball team captain and was the second-leading scorer in the Big Ten. Selected to the collegiate All-Star team, he was named most valuable player when the All-Stars beat the National Basketball League champion Washington Bears in an exhibition game. Graham also played baseball and compiled Northwestern's third-highest batting average.

But it was on the gridiron that Graham really excelled at Northwestern. Invited to spring football practice as a freshman, Graham threw three touchdown passes and ran for three others in the annual intramural scrimmage game. In his college days, he set new single-season and career passing marks for the Big Ten. In one game against Michigan, he connected on 20 of 29 passes for 295 yards. Graham became one of only a few college players to be named an All-American in both football and basketball. He finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting for the best college football player of 1943.

Entering the Navy, Graham married Beverly Collinge during preflight training for the V-5 carrier program. They would soon start a family of three children. In the service, Graham became cadet regional commander and also played football for Paul "Bear" Bryant, who went on to enjoy a legendary college coaching career. In the Navy, Graham learned how to quarterback in the new "T" formation, where the quarterback stood directly behind the center.

After World War II ended, Graham played one season with the National Basketball League's Rochester Royals as part of a league championship squad. He retired from basketball after that single pro season in favor of football. Cleveland's Paul Brown had trained his sights on Graham ever since 1941, when he had been coaching Ohio State University and Graham beat him by throwing off-balance while running for a touchdown. As the war wound down, Brown decided to form a new team, and Graham was his first pick. Brown signed him to a contract while Graham was still in the Navy, paying him a $1,000 bonus and $250 a month until the war was over so he wouldn't be tempted to sign elsewhere. Sure enough, Graham was drafted by the Detroit Lions but instead signed with Cleveland to play in the newly formed All America Football Conference.

Emerging from the war with a solid core of collegiate players who had been in the service, the Browns became a juggernaut. In their first season, the Browns won the AAFC championship, making Graham the first player to be on two world championship teams in different sports in the same year. After that season Brown tore up Graham's initial two-year contract and raised his pay to $12,000 a year.

An Innovative Team

Brown quickly became football's most innovative coach, and Graham was his ideal quarterback, a deadly accurate passer and a creative playmaker. Together, Brown and Graham shifted the emphasis in football from running to passing. But Graham was forced to submerge his ego to Brown's. Brown became the first coach to call plays regularly for his quarterback, instituting the rotating messenger guard system to bring plays from the sideline to the huddle.

At the time, it was widely reported that Graham chafed at the arrangement. But in an interview in Sports Illustrated in 1998, Graham said he hadn't been unhappy. "[O]n the Browns there was room for only one ego, and it wasn't mine," he told interviewer Paul Zimmerman. "I never criticized the coach. He was the admiral, the general, the CEO." Under Brown and Graham, the Browns dominated the league in the four seasons that the AAFC existed, winning four championships with a total of 52 wins, four losses and three ties. Graham, who was cool under pressure and remarkably consistent, was named AAFC Most Valuable Player three of those four seasons, in 1947, 1948 and 1949, leading the league in passing yardage each year.