He was a great man, too, with a pro-football after-life that eclipsed a storied career
He earned a PhD. in mathematics and taught the subject at Rice and Yale Universities. He introduced computers to the U.S. House of Representatives, spent 10 years as athletic director at Yale and was a fund-raising executive at Rice.
In short, he was a success ... during and after pro football.
Granted, his career as a starting quarterback didn't last long -- five years to be exact -- but look what happened during that time:
-- In 1964, he delivered Cleveland its last NFL title with a 27-0 upset of the Baltimore Colts.
-- The following season, the Browns were back in the championship game again, this time losing to the Green Bay Packers in the mud. "They were better mudders than we were", lamented Ryan.
-- From 1963-67, his five seasons as a starter for the Browns, he was 48-17-1 and threw 117 touchdown passes. Only AFL legend Len Dawson threw more in that span.
-- He threw more touchdowns in those five years than Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen, Fran Tarkenton -- and everybody else for that matter -- and his touchdown percentage was 7.9 percent, tops in all of pro football.
-- His 48 quarterback wins were tied for the most with Unitas, and his .745 winning percentage was third behind Unitas (.750) and Bart Starr (.746).
Ryan's career started with the Los Angeles Rams, where he served predominately as a backup to Billy Wade. In five seasons there, he was 8-8-2 as a starter, with unremarkable passing numbers. Then he was traded to Cleveland, spending seven years with the Browns before ending his career in Washington where he served dual roles under Vince Lombardi. He was the backup to starting quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, but he was also paid to set up an analytics group to study football statistics for Lombardi.
Ryan made $75,000 as a player and $35,000 to run the group.
When he retired in 1971 he'd thrown for 16,042 yards and 149 touchdowns, produced a 7.0 touchdown percentage (149 touchdown passes in 2,233 attempts) that ranks third all-time and a 14.7 yards-per-completion is 11th.
But there was much more to the man than football.
Ryan earned his Ph.D. in mathematics while playing in the NFL. He earned a degree in physics at Rice Institute (now Rice University) while playing football for the Owls and returned to the school in the offseason to advance his studies. Included was work teaching advanced elective classes, with Ryan once forced to write left-handed on chalkboards while his right arm was in a sling.
Why?
He'd been hurt in the 1965 Pro Bowl by a gang tackle led by Hall-of-Fame defensive end Gino Marchetti, still angry from the 27-0 pounding his Colts took from Ryan and the Browns the previous week. Doctors treated the shoulder injury with pain-killing injections, but Ryan's arm was never the same afterward.
In the summer of 1965, however, he gained his doctorate with a dissertation entitled, "A Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc." No, I have no idea what it means, either, but what I do know is that he was then called "Dr. Frank Ryan" by some writers and sportscasters.
Former New York Times columnist Red Smith, for example, joked that Cleveland's offense consisted of a quarterback who understood Einstein's theory of relativity and 10 teammates who didn't know there was one.
As an assistant professor at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve), he taught undergraduate and graduate classes while still playing for the Browns and Redskins Then, after retiring, he was hired by the U.S. House of Representatives to head a group that developed the first computerized voting system -- one that cut the time for voting by two-thirds.
After that, it was on to New Haven, Ct., where he spent a decade as a mathematics lecturer and athletic director at Yale University and, later, was the school's Vice President for Institutional Planning before moving on to become CEO of an electronics company. His fascination with math and computers never wavered, with Ryan's later years involved with designing a computer program to analyze the behavior of futures markets and work on theorems concerning prime numbers.
"Our hearts are with the family and friends of Frank Ryan, as we honor the life of a Browns icon and championship-winning quarterback," the Cleveland Browns posted on social media shortly after Ryan's death. on Tuesday.
As evidenced by his yards-per-completion and high touchdown percentage, Frank Ryan was an effective deep passer. As evidenced by his mathematical theories and proofs, he was an effective deep thinker.
What a rare combination.
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