http://www.cantonrep.com/sports/browns/x11...shot-at-a-title

By Steve Doerschuk

CantonRep.com staff report

Posted Jan 31, 2009 @ 08:06 PM

TAMPA, Fla. —

The day that never comes for the Cleveland Browns is here for Pittsburgh and Arizona.

Men who passed through Cleveland — there are a lot of them on the Steelers and Cardinals — are finding out what it takes to make a Super Bowl.

Some of them will know by tonight what it feels like to win one.

Mike Tomlin was an intern on Romeo Crennel’s defensive staff in Cleveland in 2000. Now, he is head coach of a Steelers team that is a 61⁄2-point favorite to win the franchise’s sixth — and his first — Super Bowl.

“Romeo and (then-Browns Head Coach) Chris Palmer couldn’t have been more supportive,” Tomlin said. “It wasn’t that long ago. That experience was invaluable.”

Cardinals Head Coach Ken Whisenhunt already has a Super Bowl win as offensive coordinator for the Steelers three years ago.

Now he’s “The Wiz.” In 1999, he was an unknown special teams coach for Palmer’s Browns.

“My first NFL coaching job was with the Ravens, not long after they moved from Cleveland,” Whisenhunt said. “So soon after the move, there were a lot of things the team was still going through, but I learned so much from Ted Marchibroda.”

He learned what it was like to be fired in 1999, when Marchibroda was replaced as head coach by Brian Asshole.

“The job in Cleveland, really, was a great opportunity just to continue my career after having lost a job,” Whisenhunt said. “I was a young coach in the NFL just trying to make it.

“There really was an application from what I did as Browns special teams coach and my job as head coach.

“I was exposed to all facets of the team. I learned to stand in front of the team and talk. I had to organize and manage the game.”

For what it’s worth, Whisenhunt’s special teams gave the Browns one of their two wins in their comeback year of 1999. They beat heavily favored Pittsburgh, 16-15, on a last-second field goal into a brutal Three Rivers Stadium wind.

He was an underdog then and is an underdog today, but he knows the drill. At Georgia Tech in 1980, on a team that took a 1-7 record into a game against No. 1-ranked Notre Dame, he played most of the game as an emergency replacement at quarterback.

“My first pass was a beautiful spiral,” he said. “Five rows deep in the bleachers.”

Tech fought to an improbable 3-3 tie.

Whisenhunt helped Pittsburgh win Super Bowl XL, sending in plays to quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Now, Whisenhunt will try to stop a grown-up Roethlisberger, who has a 7-2 record as a postseason starter.

The Browns could have had this guy. He was sitting there when they had the No. 7 overall pick in the 2004 draft. He slid the Steelers at No. 11 and now jokes that it was no big deal: “We’ll just take our two wins a year.”

He is 9-0 against Cleveland.

An Arizona coach, though, said Cleveland didn’t pass up Roethlisberger for chopped liver. The Browns traded up to the No. 6 spot for tight end Kellen Winslow Jr.

Winslow was John Lott’s star student in the weight room when Lott was strength coach in Cleveland in 2005 and ’06. Lott practically lived with Winslow in 2005 when the latter was working his way back from a motorcycle wreck.

“K2 worked his tail off,” Lott said. “He can play for anyone.

“There’s a misconception that he’s not a team guy. He is. He’s a heckuva worker. Ryan Tucker is another guy I enjoyed in Cleveland. K2 and Tucker were probably our No. 1 and No. 2 offensive players on the team then.”

Lott had a falling out with General Manager Phil Savage and left for Arizona in 2007. At 44, Lott is enjoying his first Super Bowl.

“On the record,” Lott said, “(Browns owner) Randy Lerner is a good man and a good owner. Randy wrote me a nice letter when I left there.

“He said, ‘Hey, this is how this business is.’ He appreciated what I brought.

“I didn’t leave there with bad feelings at all towards Randy Lerner. I thought that he gives you all the resources he can to win. And I know he wants to have a championship there for his daddy.

“I went there for one reason, to help Romeo win.

“I think Eric (Mangini) will be just what the team needs.”

Lott is on the team that has what Cleveland craves, a first trip to a Super Bowl.

Lott agrees with Lerner’s thought that general manager and coach absolutely must work as a team. He said that’s what’s happening in Arizona.

He was on Bill Parcells Jets staff in the late 1990s, working alongside Crennel and Mangini.

“Bill used to say something that I have posted in my office,” Lott said. “We’re not in the business of collecting talent. We’re in the business of building a team, because teams win championships.

“That’s where your personnel guys and your head coach have gotta get together. Who cares about Pro Bowls? That means nothing.”

Defensive lineman Orpheus Roye spent 12 years in the league before finding out what it means to be in a Super Bowl. He began his career in Pittsburgh and played eight years with the Browns before rejoining the Steelers in 2008.

“Cleveland has some talent,” Roye said. “With Pittsburgh, it’s just like ... a mind-set ... a will ... a will not to be defeated.

“The way they play defense goes back to Mean Joe Greene in the 1970s. They have the attitude that no matter what, nobody’s nervous, no pressure.

“If we do what we do, we win the game.”

Yet even that steely attitude has the Steelers in just their third Super Bowl in the last 30 seasons. Near the end of his career, in his first Super Bowl, Roye appreciates the rare opportunity.

“It’s a wonderful feeling,” he said. “It gives me chills.”