Cleveland Brown's fullback Marion Motley comes in as the 74th best player in NFL history on NFL Film's "The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players" list (2010).
His brothers, my great uncle (Bill) and my grandpa (Clarence) were just as tough! I miss my great uncle Marion. He was the pride of the Motley family!!!
In 2019, your great uncle Marion is still one of the 6 best running backs to ever play this game. I'm certainly not going to second guess the great Paul Brown's coaching but if Marion didn't pull double duty at linebacker (where his body really took more of the punishment) there's no telling what his career rushing stats might look like. This short little bio really doesn't do him justice. He averaged 5.8 yards per carry I think for his career but in championship games, it was usually an astounding 7.5 or 8.0 yards per carry. The man was a freak of nature. Better than Jim Brown. God bless your great uncle Marion!
Bruce Wayne I once mailed Marion a short letter and a card for him to sign. He signed and returned the card and even took the time to send me back a handwritten letter. He was a great player but he was also a kind and generous man.
your great uncle was my grandmothers favorite player. she loved her browns as i do. that's something for a white woman in Cleveland in the 1940s. god bless to you and your family. go browns!!
He looks closer to 6’3, 245, and very thick. Great power, feet, catching ability and probably the best passing blocking back ever. He could play in any era. No cap.
That's high praise from a guy like Mike Brown. Say what you will about him as an owner, but he's been in the game so long that he's seen everybody from Motley to Brown to Payton to Peterson with his own eyes and he puts Motley up there with them.
EASILY he is THE most under appreciated player in NFL History. He was the Jackie Robinson of the National Football League. Countless awards, trophies, and honors are long overdue to this man and his courageous contributions to society and and his own culture.
My dad always told me until his death in 1999 that the 49 Browns where the greatest pro team of all time and Graham and Motley was the engine. And that's coming from a Baltimore Colt fan. Got to love that white football too.
There are several reasons. 1. Motley's best years came in the All-America Football Conference. There was a fierce rivalry between the AAFC and the NFL, long before the AFL came along. As a consequence, some of Motley's accomplishments are viewed in a less than favorable light. Whether this is justified or not is not for me to say; I am no expert on the AAFC. However, the fact that such bias existed and lingers is hard to dispute. 2. He played before pro football was a big televised sport. Motley retired after the 1955 season (he left the Browns after 53, making an unsuccessful comeback with the Steelers in 55). Brown came into the NFL at a great time, when the nation was just becoming aware and interested. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was much more visible. 3. Brown's overall body of work is much greater than Motley's. Brown scored 126 touchdowns to Motley's 38; had 2359 carries to 828; yards were 12312 to 828. By greater, I mean bigger and more, not necessarily better. Motley has a better per carry average than Brown. If you look at his five healthy years before his knee injury, Motley scored once every 20.15 touches; Brown every 20.81 touches. Still, 126 scores looks better to people than an average of touches for scores. The fact of the matter is the Browns didn't give Motley the kind of work Brown did. In those first five years he averaged 9.8 carries for 59.9 yards (6.1 yards per carry). It's hard to compare a guy who got ten carries a game (in his best years) to one who got 20. 4. Some of Brown's individual accomplishments are staggering. In nine years he led the NFL in rushing eight times. That will never happen again. He averaged almost exactly 20 carriers per game for nine seasons and missed no games. 5. Motley shared the spotlight with his quarterback, Otto Graham. Graham is a contender for being the greatest quarterback of all time (in my view he loses out to Unitas, but that's beside the point). Brown was Cleveland. Frank Ryan didn't exactly steal the limelight the way Graham did. On an even broader note, Motley is defined by being a part of the dominant Cleveland teams that enjoyed so much success. Go look at Jim Brown's video for this list. It casually mentions an NFL Championship (1964). Brown was always on a contending team, don't misunderstand. However, he defined that contender. The Browns had so much success with Motley that it was impossible for him to stand out from his teammates the way Brown did from his. Look at the Packers under Lombardi; five NFL titles. Who was the best of them? Nitschke? Starr? Davis? Gregg? Taylor? Or the Steelers in the 70s? Bradshaw or Greene? Lambert or Ham? These, I think, are the main reasons people remember Brown more than Motley. I do not hold all of them to be legitimate reasons, but they seem to be the main causes of the phenomenon you observe. I think Motley is one of the great players of pro football, regardless of era. I believe he would play in this era, given today's nutrition, weights, science, and other aids. A team would use two backs to get him on the field. He should certainly be higher on this list. If you haven't already, you might pick up the 1970 edition of Paul Zimmerman's "A Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football." It's a lovely read and has a short chapter on Motley at or near the end.
Motley was an all around player, great blocker (fans could care less about blockers and linebacker). Plus his stats werent "great" (since wins were more important back then).
That guy had the most powerful build on an NFL player I ever saw. I am inclined to pick him as the top RB ever. He looks like he could run thru brick walls.
Bob Polaneczky How could he, he was built like a truck. Who was going to run over him? I could see him be a HB, FB (because of his blocking and size), and possibly TE.
without Motley, Friz Pollard and Deacon Dan Towler, there are no Black football players and essentially no NFL. Imagine football with LT (Taylor or Tomlinson), Walter Payton, Reggie White, Lynn Swann, Mean Joe, Jerry Rice, etc. Of course you can't.
The first black players in the NFL were Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall in 1920. Pollard was also the first black head coach in the NFL as well. There were a total of 9 black players in the NFL in the 1920's.
It's interesting to me that the name Marion Motley doesn't come up more often. Maybe because baseball was so huge in 1940's compared to pro football and it didn't generate the attention Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color line did. They were winning championships and he was clearly a dominant force. Feel like he ought to be talked about more both as a player and part of history generally.
The only time I've listened to Mike Brown & didn't want to clobber him. He had good taste in heroes! If Motley played 10 years later, he would be as remembered as Jim Brown
Love these players of the NFL Golden Years! Marion Motley was an unique talent that could've for any team in any Era! A head of his time! A Great Fullback, Tight End, Linebacker the NFL version of the Erector Set! Because Marion could made to fit any scheme or position he was needed at! A Bronko Nagurski of the Cleveland Browns!
Cipping was legal and close lining was legal, and horse collar tackles were all legal. In order to be great in this era you had to be one tough son of a gun!
I just read his bio. Apparently after football he really wanted to coach but the nfl wasn’t ready for a black coach and was rejected time and time again. Even by the browns.
Like he said, the great ones can play in any era, just by watching that flim you can tell he was definitely a beast, and it wasn't any fun trying to tackle that man.
those guys would have gotten their due like a Jackie robinson but baseball was the national pastime sport at the time . it would be 12 years later when the nfl takes the country by storm with the sudden death game and by the 60's with the packers where football took over and still remains the country's past time. he was a trailblazer and one of the best power backs of all time . he would have set a lot of records but brown made sure he had graham passing the ball (lead the league 5 times in yards and 3 times in tds ) .
Edward Young Probably not by accident. If you have a vision for not only the kind of scheme you want to run, and have an idea the kind of player that can execute it, the kind of players you get to execute it is no fluke. Motley, Brown, and Kelly had similar builds. Someone who is of a slighter build is not going to be able to take the HB Draw on a consistent basis, and for obvious reasons.
i love earl campbell and his runs were the most manly runs i seen . and he is near brown , but the Mot ... the using the leg as a stiff arm on DB's .. is better then the skyhook , but his move no one can to do it but him . last guy to use a dropped a arm to protect his knees on a tackle .1sT guy i seen on film was red grange
the only thing they missed was the delay Handoff, Paul saw Motley blocking in the backfield, then he had an ideal to give him the football as the rush went by.
i love this guy . look how he drops his arm to protect the leg and knee when d is inc . the arm takes the hit not the leg . leg moving as if very little is done = YAC , try to find RB that do this to day . men don't walk or run today . so running skills are very bad in the NFL of today .seen film were he plant his foot in a DB chest ,was like a stiff arm . run over the guy like he was air . to me was best i seen. never saw fims on jim thorpe. i count what runs look like and the rings , he has 5 rings . going both ways , he is the best iron man RB on film IMO .
The AAFC had its own numbering system. 20s for center, 30s for guards, 40s for tackles, 50s for ends, 60s for QBs, 70s and 80s for backs. They kept those numbers the first year or two after the NFL merger, then switched to the NFL system. Graham went from 60 to 14, Motley from 76 to 36, Groza from 46 to 76, etc.
