Best quarterback/wide receiver duos in NFL history
By Staff
19. Otto Graham and Mac Speedie
He was actually the No. 4 overall pick in the 1944 NFL Draft, and he definitely lived up to the hype. Otto Graham was the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns from 1946 to 1955.
His rookie season in ’46 was the first year of the franchise’s existence, and he led them to the All-American Football Conference Championship with 17 touchdown passes. He led them to another championship in 1947, and then he did it again in 1948.
You know just to save some time, Graham was so good that he won seven championships with the Browns. The first four came while the team was still in the AAFC. And when they merged into the NFL in 1950, Graham led them to the championship title that year, too. The final two titles came in 1954 and 1955.
In a bit of a similar situation to Antonio Freeman and Sterling Sharpe example, Graham had two favorite targets. While it was Dante Lavelli who hauled in 57 of Graham’s 174 touchdowns, it was actually Mac Speedie who he targeted the most. Lavelli might have been with Graham for all of the championship runs, but Speedie was there for the first five.
During that stretch from 1946 to 1950, Speedie led the league in receptions three times with 187 grabs in those three seasons. He also hit the 1,000-yards-receiving mark twice in that same period of time.
The problem was Speedie was already 26 years old when the franchise came together, and so he ended up hanging up the leather helmet three years before Graham and four years before Lavelli.
Speedie led the league in receptions one last time before retiring in 1952 with 62 receptions, and he retired with 33 career touchdown receptions — 30 of those were from Graham.