Brainy Brown

Yes, but it also makes him look awkward. And that is what is so refreshing about Kosar. Here is a slow, humble, neighborhood kind of guy, with a bad body ("He makes me look in shape," says 36-year-old backup quarterback Gary Danielson), throwing incorrectly like some kid down the block. "That's what he is," says Browns offensive tackle and Kosar's close friend Paul Farren, "a normal kid from anybody's neighborhood."

Except that Kosar is very good. So good that in the AFC championship game against the Denver Broncos last season he completed 16 of 22 passes for 246 yards, three TDs and no interceptions, all in the second half. So good that his career quarterback rating of 84.6 makes him the fifth-highest-rated NFL quarterback of all time. So good that Browns owner Art Modell is ready to extend Kosar's current five-year $5.2 million contract in order to "keep him in Cleveland for life." How much money will that mean? "If they double my contract or cut it in half, it won't change my life-style," says Kosar with a shrug.

What Kosar likes most is being one of the guys, not the star who gets mobbed by hordes of screaming fans, who is supposed to take limos and be a cut above his teammates. "I'd rather blend in," he says. "It's impossible because I'm the quarterback, I know. But I'd like to."

"We go to Detroit to see hockey games and he says, 'I love going to Detroit, where I'm just another Joe Bag-a-dough-nuts,' " says Danielson. "I don't know what that means, the 'Bag-a-doughnuts.' But he loves it."

What it means is that Kosar is not particularly taken with himself. "He has a great, easygoing attitude," says Farren. Kosar has a girlfriend of four years, 24-year-old Babette Ferre, who recently graduated from Florida International University in Miami. But she lives in Florida, and who knows where the romance will lead? For now, Kosar is happy grabbing a beer with his teammates, visiting sick children in the hospital and then heading back to the family home in Boardman, where his parents treat him like no big deal at all.

"We always wanted our kids to do whatever they enjoyed," says Geri Kosar, a warm, thoughtful mother whose dark eyes were passed on to all three of her children. "If it was sports, fine. We wanted them tired and out of trouble. We always knew where they were at 10 o'clock at night—in bed, asleep."

The Kosars are so democratic in their distribution of affection that Brian's college baseball games get the same attention as Bernie's NFL games. Last fall the two boys played on the same day. Dad went to Bernie's game. Mom attended Brian's, listened to the Browns on the radio and videotaped the baseball game so Dad could see it when he returned.

Kosar rents a skybox at Cleveland Stadium year-round so that his parents can watch Browns games in comfort and he can watch the Indians in tranquillity. He loves baseball. He was an outstanding third baseman at Boardman High School, as well as a very good basketball player. Now he sits in his box in left centerfield, some 450 feet from home plate, studying the Indians as they mount a drive against the Oakland Athletics.

Kosar will go to as many games as he can, coming late and leaving early to avoid the crowds, sometimes sitting alone, hardly moving, concentrating fiercely, losing himself for precious hours in the minutiae of the sport. For he dearly loves to observe, and to learn.

Tonight he is with his parents and Brian. When Brian asks who is up, Kosar says quickly, " Terry Francona."