Leroy Kelly selected for Black College Hall

Leroy Kelly, the Simon Gratz running back who replaced Jim Brown in the Cleveland Browns backfield, was named to the Black College Football Hall of Fame on Wednesday.

Kelly, 71, a 1964 graduate of Morgan State, was one of seven who will be inducted at the Class of 2014 enshrinement ceremony in Atlanta on March 1. The others are Michael Strahan, John Stallworth, Robert Brazile, Willie Totten, Doug Wilkerson, and Alcorn State coach Marino Casem.

Kelly helped Morgan State win the 1962 Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship, leading his team in rushing, scoring, and punting.

"Leroy is one of the finest backs I've ever coached," Morgan State's Earl Banks said at the time. "He has everything it takes."

Still, he wasn't picked until the eighth round of the NFL draft in 1964, when the Browns, a team that already had the league's premier runner, selected him.

As a rookie kick- and punt-returner, Kelly played a significant role in the team's NFL championship. But when Brown retired following the 1965 season and coach Blanton Collier installed him as the replacement, he was largely unknown.

"Jim was the best ever, but I really didn't feel a lot of pressure when I replaced him," Kelly told The Inquirer in 1994, the year he was selected for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "We were different kinds of runners. I just tried to be me."

That was pretty good. He led the league in rushing in both 1967 and 1968, the only runner in each of those seasons to amass 1,000 yards. He led the NFL in touchdowns three straight years (1966-68) and in a 10-year NFL career earned six Pro Bowl trips.

Kelly was fast, elusive, particularly adept on off fields, and, missing just three games in eight seasons as a Cleveland starter, extremely durable.

"A lot of that is just plain luck. Tacklers didn't get in many good shots on me because I was pretty shifty. I wasn't a sprinter but I was deceptively fast and I was pretty strong," said Kelly, who was listed at 6-foot-2, 202 pounds.

He accumulated 12,329 all-purpose yards in the NFL. He rushed for 7,274 yards, caught 190 passes for another 2,281, and returned kicks and punts for 2,774 more. He finished with 90 touchdowns.

Kelly was selected to the NFL's all-decade team for the 1960s.

Released by the Browns in 1974, Kelly, the older brother of longtime Major League Baseball outfielder Pat, played a single season with the Chicago Fire of the World Football League. He later was a running backs coach with the WFL's Philadelphia Bell.