Browns-Saints, Oct. 31, 1999: The Best Day of My Life

By MICHAEL HEINBACH

Since the Cleveland Browns returned to the NFL ten years ago, storybook endings for the Brown and Orange have been few and far between.

More often than not and aside from the 2002 season when the Browns reached the playoffs and 2007’s surprising 10-6 team that just missed out on the postseason, it has been Cleveland’s opponents that have been the ones to rally to win in the fourth quarter as "Browns Backers", like myself, turn to each other with pained expressions and say, “Why us?”.

This is a story however, of one of the Browns’ most glorious victories in franchise history. It was special for many reasons, but the two most important for your average Browns fan were the way it ended and the fact it was the team’s first victory in its first season back in Cleveland after leaving for Baltimore following the 1995 season.

For me this game was more than special, because I was there. This is a first-hand account of the events that unfolded in New Orleans on Halloween 1999, a day I still claim as the best of my life.

It was a time I think fondly of as my salad days. I was working as a bartender in a small casino in Missoula, Mont., making more money than I ever had, and more than I ever have since as I soon broke into the newspaper business and thus forfefitted a life of prosperity.

Along with three friends, I was renting a beautiful home forty five minutes outside of town which sat on 360 acres of wooded property boarded by Forrest Service land. I was in my middle twenties and had no idea just how good I had it.

In the fall of 1999, my girlfriend’s mother fell ill and Kavita moved back to South Carolina to help care for her. I was flushed with cash for the first time in my life, so my girlfriend and I decided we would meet in New Orleans for the Halloween run of concerts by the band Widespread Panic. At the time, money wasn’t and obstacle.

The Sunday before I was set to depart on the plane ride to the Crescent City, which had yet to be ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, I watched the New York Giants face the hapless New Orleans Saints on the satellite television, where we received the New York CBS affiliate. It was then I realized the one-win Saints were going to host the winless Cleveland Browns the next week, and I would be in New Orleans.

So days later, along with my travel gear and my Gene Simmons Halloween costume I would don for the Panic show, I packed my Chris Spielman Browns jersey - he retired from football in the preseason and never played a regular-season down for the Browns - excited at the prospect of seeing the new Browns take their best shot thus far at a victory.

These were the expansion Browns, who placed the fate of the entire franchise on the first overall selection in the NFL draft, a quarterback from the University of Kentucky named Tim Couch.

Cleveland had passed up on quarterbacks Daunte Culpepper and Donovan McNabb in the same draft and picked the strong-armed Couch, who was thrust into the starting job late in the first game of the season and promptly threw an interception on his first NFL pass attempt. Welcome to the big time Timmy.

Though they weren’t an expansion team, the Saints of 1999 almost made the Browns appear like a functional franchise. New Orleans head coach Mike Ditka had traded away the Saints’ entire draft class in order to move up and take University of Texas running back Ricky Williams. 

So after arriving Saturday afternoon and seeing that evening’s Panic show with my special lady we hit the sack, ready to wake up early the next day and head to the Superdome, hoping to find tickets to an epic battle between a pair of NFL bottom feeders.

About an hour and a half prior to kickoff

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