Frank Ryan, who guided the original Cleveland Browns to their final NFL championship game upset win in 1964, passed away on Monday. He was eighty-seven.

Ryan’s son, Frank “Pancho” Ryan, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that his father, a three-time Pro Bowl selection who played 13 seasons in the NFL from 1958 to 1970, passed away from Alzheimer’s disease. According to the publication, Ryan had been residing in a Waterford, Connecticut, care home.

In the 1964 NFL championship game, Ryan passed for three touchdowns to Gary Collins, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com. In Cleveland, the Browns defeated the widely favoured Baltimore Colts 27-0 to capture their fourth NFL championship.

According to The New York Times, that was the last major professional victory Cleveland would see until the Cavaliers upset the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA championship in June 2016. Cleveland’s baseball team last won a World Series title in 1948, while the city has yet to have a Super Bowl trip.

Ryan spent seven seasons as a player in Cleveland after joining the team from the Los Angeles Rams in 1962. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, he is still ranked second in passing touchdowns and fifth in passing yards.

Pro-Football-Reference.com reports that the quarterback started for the Browns and had a 52-22 record while throwing 134 touchdowns.

According to the Times, Ryan graduated with a doctorate in mathematics from Rice University six months after leading the Browns to the NFL championship. According to the publication, he was the Houston school’s backup quarterback.

According to the Times, Ryan taught mathematics at Yale and Rice after serving as a math professor at the Case Institute of Technology, which is now known as Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, where he was a player for the Browns.

Before retiring in 1970, Ryan spent his final two seasons as a player in Washington. After that, according to the Plain Dealer, he worked for the US House of Representatives for seven years, serving as the director of the chamber’s first computerised voting system.

The publication then stated that he served as Yale’s athletic director for ten years. The Times stated that he will rise to the position of senior administrator at the university before joining Rice as an executive in charge of fundraising.

Ryan thought that his football playing contributed to his Alzheimer’s illness because he was aware of the risks associated with concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to the Plain Dealer. His brain has been donated to the CTE centre at Boston University.

The Browns released a statement in which they said, “Our sympathies are with the family and friends of Frank Ryan, as we honour the life of a Browns icon and championship-winning quarterback.”