History of the Cleveland Rams

Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Waterfield led the Cleveland Rams to the 1945 NFL Championship.

With the arrival of star quarterback Bob Waterfield, the drafting of Pat West and the return of back Fred Gehrke, who would go on to create the first ever designed and painted helmet in NFL history, the team finally gelled into championship calibre. Donelli was drafted into the Navy, but Chile Walsh's brother Adam Walsh quickly took over as head coach.

Waterfield-to-Benton became an aerial threat to opposing teams, with Benton becoming the NFL's first 300-yard receiver by hauling in 10 passes for 303 yards against the Lions on Thanksgiving Day 1945. Benton's performance shattered the mark set by Green Bay Packers legend Don Hutson (237 yards) two years earlier in a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The record stood for a remarkable 40 years, until it was broken by the Kansas City Chiefs' Stephone Paige in 1985. It still stands as the fourth-most receiving yards in a single game.[7]

The only loss on the Rams' 9-1 regular-season record came to the Philadelphia Eagles. Otherwise Cleveland plowed through the powers that had held a championship hegemony in the NFL since the early 1930s—the Bears, Giants, Packers, and Lions—and defeated the Washington Redskins, 15–14, in the 1945 NFL Championship Game in near-zero degree weather at Cleveland Stadium.

The Rams, led by Waterfield, who was married to Hollywood star Jane Russell, were described as "sport’s first spectacular postwar team."[8]

Only one month after winning the championship, Reeves overcame initial objections of his fellow NFL owners and announced he would be moving the Rams to Los Angeles. He cited financial losses and poor attendance in Cleveland - even the 1945 championship game had drawn a crowd of less than half capacity, which undoubtedly was not helped by the sub-zero weather. In all likelihood, the only thing that had kept the team in Cleveland until 1945 was wartime travel restrictions that had been eased with the end of hostilities - Reeves had his eye on the booming (and much warmer) L.A. market since buying the team in 1941.[9] He also was leery of competition in the Cleveland market from the incoming Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference, who would be stocked with many Ohio players and coached by former Ohio State coach Paul Brown. The Rams' move opened up the Cleveland market to the new Browns, who would meet with a high degree of initial success in the AAFC and the NFL. At the same time the Rams and their championship were soon forgotten in Cleveland, in part due to a month-long, citywide newspaper strike that paralleled the team's departure, delayed coverage, and muted the public outcry, which was further mollified by the immediate replacement of the Rams with a team under the popular Brown, even if they would be playing in a fledgling, upstart league.[10]

Once in L.A., the Rams were forced to integrate their team with African-American players as a condition for renting the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.[11] In doing so, the Rams (along with the Cleveland Browns) reintegrated pro football, and Reeves's move also opened the West Coast to pro sports teams that later included the westward moves of five franchises and establishments of additional pro sports teams in California and Los Angeles from the major sports leagues.