1974-the Steelers rise,the Browns fall

The story of the Pittsburgh Steelers and their 1974 draft has been told often and it should be, it created an NFL power that has pretty much continued until this day, but there's another story-that of how the Cleveland Browns downturn started around the same time and with the exception of the 1980s has continued to the current time.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes about this here but look at the record (Via the PD)  The Browns were 35-13 against the Steelers before it, and are 22-50 ever since. 

The Cleveland Browns had generally dominated the Steelers and even during the Steelers 1972 division title-winning season that generally is credited for turning the tide between the two teams, the Browns were still a playoff team and almost ended the 1972 Dolphins perfect run in the first round in a 20-14 loss.

However, the team that had won championships and reached the conference finals was beginning to show its age, and the attempts to get younger such as the Paul Warfield trade that obtained Mike Phipps as the quarterback of the future had not worked out.
The "future is now" approach by George Allen in Washington was the rage in the league.
Youth meant inexperience and dumb mistakes and Art Modell bought into this thinking-big time.

The first and 1975 second rounders went to San Diego for an average linebacker named Bob Babich, the third to Denver for a quarterback that couldn't threaten Phipps, let alone anyone else in Don Horn, and the fourth went to Oakland for faded wideout Gloster Richardson.
Babich hung around for a few years as an unspectacular starter, while Horn and Richardson were in and out of Cleveland to barely make it through the change of seasons.

The Browns went straight in the river in 1974 going 4-10 and picked a second-rounder that went straight to Canada right before the Steelers took a guy named Lambert from their backyard in Kent State and would have one winning season in the next five.
Pittsburgh would win four Super Bowls in the next six seasons and build a dynasty while Cleveland would become the kid on the beach getting sand kicked in their face.

I find this interesting not because of the teams involved, but the philosophy involved.
Draft picks today are treated like gold bars and only teams that are near the edge make major deals involving high picks for veteran players.
And to this day, those trades backfire more than not.

An example is the Tampa Bay trade just last year in swapping a number one for Darrelle Revis and then going 4-12.
Revis is an excellent player, but Tampa Bay wasn't one player away, yet they deceived themselves into thinking they were at a high cost.
The Browns even did this as recently as a few years trading draft picks for guys like Corey Williams and Shaun Rogers after their 10-6 season, thinking these guys would lift them up.
Instead of those deals, poor picks with the picks that they did have and the flop of Brady Quinn costing them a first-rounder sent them with what was essentially fools gold.

The draft is the best way to build as you get players cheaper and for a longer period of time, but picking the wrong players like the Browns usually seem to do is a concern, then I can see trading picks for proven products.
The problem with that is that you are patching holes with bubble gum and then wondering why the boat won't be usable in a year.
The 1974 draft is the pivotal point in time that the Steelers and Browns organizations switched spots in the hierarchy, here is hoping that this draft marks the beginning of the swing back to Cleveland.
At least there is hope. For now.