CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Louis Riddick remembers driving into Cleveland Municipal Stadium on January 1, 1995.
“Driving in that day down to the old stadium was awesome,” Riddick said. “They had the orange shakers. It was like a college game. It was like Auburn-Alabama in the stadium that day.”
Browns head coach Bill Belichick had trusted his players to stay at home on New Year’s Eve, the night before they hosted the Patriots in the playoffs, with the understanding they could police themselves.
“I remember Pepper Johnson and Carl Banks said, ‘If I catch any of you guys out on the street I’m going to kick your ass personally,’” Riddick said in a phone interview with cleveland.com “I was like, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be in the bed.’”
Every week, it seems the Browns are doing something for the first time since 1994. The Browns went 11-5 that season and beat the Patriots in the Wild Card round. Riddick signed with the Browns in 1993. He worked out for the Browns in front of Belichick and defensive coordinator Nick Saban. He figured he wouldn’t get signed after he got dropped off at the airport until a page came over the loudspeakers.
“I’m literally walking to my gate and over the loudspeaker it says, ‘Louis Riddick, pick up a white courtesy phone’ and I’m like, ‘What?’” he said. “I pick it up and it’s (Pro personnel assistant) Scott Pioli. He says, turn around, van will be outside, call your wife or your fiance -- she was my girlfriend at the time, my wife now -- have her send you some clothes, Bill wants to sign you.”
Riddick played for the Browns from 1993 until the team left for Baltimore after the 1995 season.
If you want to see Riddick playing in a Browns uniform, just watch Eric Metcalf’s legendary second punt return against the Steelers in 1993 at Municipal Stadium. Riddick escorted Metcalf into the endzone and, it turns out, he was the only player who could tackle Metcalf on the play, doing so after the dynamic returner bounced off the fans in the Dawg Pound after he scored.
“We had been doing that to people all year long,” Riddick said. “We had, on that team, Stevon Moore, Eric Turner, we had some of our best players on special teams, especially on the return teams, because Metcalf was that good and we just knew if we got a couple big blocks, he was gone. We set that return up perfectly.”
Riddick credited special teams coordinator Scott O’Brien for the success of the unit, who became must-see for everyone on the team.
“Back then, blindside blocks were legal,” he said, “so what was cool about that is, when we would watch the tape the next day, the whole team would come in there and try and watch because we were knocking guys out. We knew we could flip games on returns and special teams.”
Meanwhile, the Browns were getting coached by men who would go on to become among the coaching greats. Belichick, Nick Saban, O’Brien, who someone recently told Riddick recently they believe is the best special teams coach in the history of the game. You’ve seen the lists of coaching and front office success stories spawned by those mid-’90s Browns teams.
Many of the things that would drive Belichick’s program in New England were happening in Cleveland -- the preparation, the attention to detail.
“Bill demanded smart football,” Riddick said. “If your a** was busting assignments, you wouldn’t play.”
Riddick didn’t know Saban before he arrived in Cleveland, but he knew he was special pretty quickly, calling games off of 3x5 index cards and giving Riddick nightmares with how demanding he was.
“If I just do what he tells me, we’re going to win,” Riddick said. “The reason why we lose is, basically, because I f**k it up, not because of what he did, because I didn’t do what he told me.”
Riddick remembered plenty of sleepless nights when he knew he made a mistake in practice. It was a high standard but one he appreciates now.
“It has driven me to what I’ve been able to accomplish now,” he said. “Everything I do with football is what I learned from those two dudes. Everything. The way they drove me is the way I approach this TV job, I tried to play that way, I was that way in the front office. Sometimes, to my kids’ detriment, they say, Dad, look, you’re not Nick and we’re not you, you don’t need to coach us that hard or be on us that hard, but that’s what I take from them and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
It all peaked on the first day of 1995, when the Browns intercepted Drew Bledsoe three times -- one by Riddick -- and beat the team Belichick would one day turn into a dynasty, 20-13.
Riddick will drive into a different stadium for Monday night’s Browns-Ravens game. The pandemic has reduced fan capacity to 12,000 and taken away the party atmosphere around the games.
So it will feel different, but this Browns team continues calling back to the last team who had the success they seek this season. The stakes of the game are still high.
“A big, big game against the franchise that used to be here, which is ironic in and of itself, that has basically bullied them for years and on Monday Night Football,” Riddick said. “How cool is that for Cleveland, man?”
Riddick knows from experience how big games in Cleveland are just different.
“This city deserves big games like that,” Riddick said, “and this is a big game like that.”
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New Browns face masks for sale: Here’s where you can buy Cleveland Browns-themed face coverings for coronavirus protection for adults and youth, including a single mask ($14.99) and a 3-pack ($24.99). All NFL proceeds donated to CDC Foundation.
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