CLEVELAND, Ohio — There has been little consistency with the Browns over the last 35 years, but one person has been in the room the whole time to document all of the ups and downs of Cleveland’s most beloved franchise.
Mary Kay Cabot, who has covered quarterback changes, coaching and front office upheaval, a franchise leaving and restarting, heartbreak and frustration alongside rare moments of joy, has been selected as the 2025 Bill Nunn Jr. Award winner by the Professional Football Writers of America (PFWA) and will be honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton later this summer.
“I am truly overwhelmed and humbled to receive this prestigious award, and I can’t thank my colleagues enough for recognizing my contribution to the game over all of these years,” Cabot said in a release from the PFWA.
The Nunn Award is given to a reporter who has made a long and distinguished contribution to pro football through coverage. The award is named for Nunn, who prior to his Hall of Fame scouting career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, worked for 22 years at the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most influential Black publications in the United States.
“Everyone in Cleveland knows that Mary Kay is the premier NFL reporter in the land, and now the rest of the country will, too,” cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer president Chris Quinn said. “She’s tireless, dogged and scrupulously accurate in making sure Browns fans know everything there is to know about their favorite team. We are lucky she calls Northeast Ohio her home.”
Cabot joins the late Chuck Heaton, who she called a dear friend, as the second journalist who primarily worked at the Cleveland Plain Dealer to win the award. Heaton won in 1980
“Chuck taught me early on that everyone has a story, and to always do the job with integrity and kindness,” Cabot said.
She is the second woman to win the award, joining Charean Williams, who won in 2018.
“I am especially grateful to be only the second female to win this award after the great Charean Williams, and I know there will be many more in the future,” Cabot said. “I hope I have at least in some small way helped blaze a trail for all of the fantastic women in the business today, and I am proud of all of their accomplishments.”
Over the course of her career, which is still going strong, she has established herself in a male-dominated field as a dogged news breaker, going toe-to-toe with national insiders, while maintaining a deft touch for coaxing personal stories out of the people she has covered and developing the instinct that allows her to see through the narratives being delivered and find the real story below the surface.
She blazed a trail for women in an industry and a sport slow to accept female reporters.
“Mary Kay Cabot is synonymous with Cleveland Browns news, and it’s because she is a relentless reporter,” Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist Nate Ulrich said. “Mary Kay is the epitome of a football writer who deserves to go from Cleveland to Canton.”
Ulrich spent 12 years working on the Browns beat for the Beacon Journal.
Mary Kay Cabot at Cleveland Media Academy
Cleveland.com Browns reporter Mary Kay Cabot shares her career story with students participating in the Cleveland Media Academy on Jan. 11, 2025.cleveland.com
Cabot began her career interning for The Plain Dealer in 1983 while in college at Kent State University and accepted an offer to join the newspaper’s sports department. She was the beat reporter covering the Cleveland Force (indoor soccer) for three years while reporting on other sports, including the Browns. She even wrote a sidebar on Cavaliers shooting guard Craig Ehlo following Michael Jordan’s series winning shot in the first round of the 1989 NBA Playoffs.
In 1991, she took over the Browns daily beat and became the first female in Cleveland media to cover a major pro team in the market.
Covering the Bill Belichick years in Cleveland only proved she was built for the job and it laid the foundation for a career in which she has documented the highs and lows of the city’s most popular team and even helped create changes to the league she covers.
Her reporting on Colt McCoy’s concussion in 2011 helped spur the league to adopt more stringent concussion protocols, including placing independent certified athletic trainers in press boxes and implementing a video system to monitor for potential concussions.
Her knack for identifying trends and noticing when things might be off has allowed her to bring things to light that otherwise might have never surfaced.
In recent years, she sensed former Browns pass rusher Jadeveon Clowney had reached a boiling point and interviewed him at his locker prior to the end of the 2022 season. He unloaded on the team about his role and suggested the team was favoring Myles Garrett over him, leading to him getting sent home and not playing in Week 18.
In January 2022, she suggested the relationship between quarterback Baker Mayfield and head coach Kevin Stefanski was strained, leading to Mayfield tweeting her column was “Clickbait.” The Browns acquired Deshaun Watson two months later and traded Mayfield for a conditional fifth-round pick that July.
She broke the story of Browns GM Ray Farmer illegally texting the sideline during games; and Kyle Shanahan using a PowerPoint presentation to force an exit from Cleveland.
Her ability to build relationships while maintaining neutrality has opened doors for stories no one else could get. She was the first reporter to talk to Hue Jackson in the wake of his midseason firing.
Her work during the final days of the Odell Beckham Jr. saga in Cleveland was singled out when The Plain Dealer won the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors award for Best Sports Enterprise in its division.
A small sampling of her recent feature work includes a story about how Joe Flacco’s family helped get him back into football or the story of Martin Emerson Jr.’s upbringing.
She has delved into the story of Michael Woods II nearly drowning as a child, dug into the eclectic mind of Garrett and pulled the story of Jamie Collins losing both of his parents at a young age from a player who generally bristled at doing interviews.
Never one to shy away from an opinion, even if it goes against the grain or might be unpopular, her ability to take the team to task when necessary or deliver a reality check has established her as a leading voice when it comes to what the Browns might be thinking or doing.
Much of her work is tinged with empathy for a Browns fanbase that has endured losing and drama ever since the team returned in 1999. In an article about in The Ringer in 2016 bearing a headline that dubbed her “The Queen of the Damned,” Cabot told Rob Harvilla before a game in the midst of the team’s 1-31 stretch, “I feel sorry for these poor people. I really do. It’s heartbreaking to me.”
Which shouldn’t be surprising. She was born in Lakewood and graduated summa cum laude from Kent State in 1984 with a degree in journalism and has a passion for Northeast Ohio and the Cleveland community. Her three children were born and raised here.
Her willingness to embrace the changing landscape of journalism has allowed her to grow beyond her hometown, amassing 225,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter, and her coverage and analysis has grown beyond the pages of the newspaper to radio, television, online video and podcasts, including the Orange and Brown Talk podcast.
Cabot is a longtime member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee and is one of four women currently serving as a selector. She is also president of the Cleveland chapter of the Pro Football Writers of America.
She was voted the 2015 Ohio Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association and the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Sportswriter of the Year in 2024. She was inducted into the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame in 2022.
She was joined as a finalist for the Bill Nunn Jr. award this year by Clarence Hill Jr. (AllDLLS.com), Mike Silver (The Athletic), and Barry Wilner (Associated Press). This was Cabot’s fourth time as a finalist.
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