Browns' Legend Bernie Kosar Looks Back in 'Learning to Scramble'

It was a football season unlike any other in 1993, the year hometown hero Bernie Kosar was let go.  Head coach Bill Belichick blamed Kosar's "diminishing skills" as the reason for saying goodbye to the last Browns quarterback to lead the team to the brink of the Super Bowl. 

Today number 19 is looking back on his career and his life outside of football in his new memoir,  Learning To Scramble, written with Craig Stout.

Now when asked if he believes that his skills had diminished by the time he was cut from the team Kosar is reflective.

"Yes, is the short answer, as much as I don't want to admit that.  But once you come into the league and you play your first game, every game after that you're probably diminishing," Kosar said.

Kosar admits that his game on the field wasn't matching up with the game he envisioned in his mind.

"Mentally I was still on top of my game but the physical part wasn't there as good as I wanted it to be," he said.

During his career in the NFL Kosar suffered at least a dozen concussions, but it was likely a lot more.  Today he wants to make sure athletes get the treatment he never received.

"The type of medical breakthroughs and type of awareness and treatments now that we're doing in 2017 as compared to say 2007 is night and day, significantly better," Kosar said.

A couple years after the Cleveland Browns left for Baltimore in 1996, the new Browns management team invited Kosar to their Berea office for advice.  But the meeting didn't go as Kosar had hoped.

"I got laughed out of Berea when Mr. [Al] Lerner and Carmen Policy asked me who should be the head coach and general manager of the Browns," Kosar said.

So whom did he suggest? A couple guys with Cleveland ties who now have a number of Super Bowl rings between them. 

"I thought Bill Belichick would've been a phenomenal head coach and Ozzie Newsome would've been the perfect general manager," Kosar said.

Despite never winning a Super Bowl with the Cleveland Browns (but he did with the Dallas Cowboys) and the toll his career took on his body, Kosar remains optimistic.

"Those life experiences really have helped formulate what I stand for and that's because I played football," Kosar said.

Bernie Kosar signs copies of his memoir Learning to Scramble published by Cleveland Landmarks Press at the Barnes and Noble at Crocker Park on Wednesday, October 18 at 7pm.

Listen to the entire interview: