Browns running back Trent Richardson doesn’t simply want to land in the Hall of Fame. He also hopes to have the corner office in Cleveland’s Mt. Rushmore.
Which necessarily means knocking Jim Brown off the top of the hill.
“I want to be the best thing that ever happened to Cleveland,” Richardson told Alex Marvez of FOXSports.com last week at the Rookie Symposium. “I want to be that type of all-time guy when it comes down to it.”
That’s the type of all-time guy that Brown was and still is. Which means that, even though Richardson didn’t say so, he’s looking to build a bigger and better legacy than Brown.
To get there, Richardson will need to win championships. Brown led the Browns to only one, part of a paltry career postseason record of 1-3. And Brown didn’t win any Super Bowls because he retired the last year before the Super Bowl era began, at the age of 29. (The Browns were competitive without him from 1966 through 1969, which means that perhaps he could have pushed them over the top in his early 30s.)
Richardson -- and the Browns -- have a long way to go before they can even whisper “Super Bowl.” But maybe Brown has been throwing water on Richardson’s potential because Brown knows that all it will take is one Super Bowl win to push Brown from the top shelf of Cleveland legends.