Bobby Mitchell was blessed with exceptional speed, uncanny faking ability and balance. They were assets that served the versatile wide receiver/halfback well during his 11-year National Football League career that began in 1958 as a seventh-round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns.
The fact that Mitchell lasted until the seventh round was somewhat of a mystery, but certainly a stroke of luck for the Browns. Mitchell, who had hoped to play flanker in the pros, was teamed with the incomparable Jim Brown to give the Browns one of history's truly great running back combinations from 1958 through 1961.