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The 1950 Cleveland Browns season was the team's first in the National Football League (NFL) after playing the previous four years in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), which folded after the 1949 season. The Browns finished the regular season with a 10–2 win–loss record and beat the Los Angeles Rams to win the NFL championship. It was Cleveland's fifth consecutive championship victory, the previous four having come in the AAFC. Cleveland added 12 new players to its roster before the season began, several of whom came from other AAFC teams that had dissolved as part of a selective merger of the Browns, the Baltimore Colts and the San Francisco 49ers into the NFL in 1949. They included guard Abe Gibron, who went on to a 10-year football career, and Len Ford, a defensive end who had a Hall of Fame career with the Browns. The team's top draft choice was halfback Ken Carpenter. After winning all five of their preseason games, the Browns faced the two-time defending champion Philadelphia Eagles in their first regular-season game. Many sportswriters and owners considered the Browns inferior despite their success in the AAFC, calling them the dominant team in a minor league, but Cleveland defeated Philadelphia 35–10, the first of 10 victories on the season. Cleveland's only two losses came against the New York Giants, with whom the team shared a 10–2 record at the end of the regular season. The tie forced a playoff to determine whether the Browns or Giants would win the American Conference and play in the championship game. Cleveland won the playoff 8–3 in freezing weather at Cleveland Stadium. A week later, on Christmas Eve, the Browns faced the Rams at home in the championship. Cleveland fell behind 28–20 in the fourth quarter against the Rams' potent offense, but quarterback Otto Graham engineered a comeback with a touchdown pass to Rex Bumgardner and a long drive that set up a winning field goal by Lou Groza with 28 seconds left to play. It was the first of six straight NFL championship appearances for the Browns. Cleveland fullback Marion Motley led the NFL in rushing, and seven Browns were selected to play in the first-ever Pro Bowl, the league's all-star game. ==Joining the NFL== The Cleveland Browns were founded and started play in 1946 in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a league formed to compete with the more established National Football League (NFL). The team was a success both financially and on the field under head coach Paul Brown, drawing large crowds and winning all four of the AAFC's championships between 1946 and 1949. In a bid to end a competition for talent that raised player salaries and ate into owners' profits at a time when attendance in many large markets was declining, the NFL and AAFC agreed to a peace deal at the end of the 1949 season. Under the deal, four of the AAFC's seven teams were to go out of business, while three of them – the Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers – would play in the NFL starting in 1950. Cleveland had been the AAFC's most successful team, but some NFL owners and sportswriters considered the Browns an inferior competitor – the top team in a lesser league. George Preston Marshall, the owner of the Washington Redskins, said the NFL's weakest team "could toy with the Browns". The AAFC had proposed an inter-league matchup between the AAFC and NFL champions in each year of its existence, but the NFL owners rebuffed those approaches each time. The Browns' entry into the NFL thus became the first time the team would be tested against NFL competition. NFL commissioner Bert Bell scheduled the team's first game against the Philadelphia Eagles, the two-time defending NFL champions. The Browns and Eagles were to play in Philadelphia on a Saturday, one day before the other NFL teams began their seasons, further spotlighting the matchup. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「1950 Cleveland Browns season」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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