The 1931 team was a league-sponsored club that played the majority of their games on the road.
The NFL had acquired the franchise of the Orange/Newark Tornadoes when that team left the league after the 1930 season; the league intended to locate this team permanently in Cleveland with new ownership.
However, game attendance for the Indians' two home games were nowhere near capacity (the home opener drew a mere 2,000 fans; the finale, a more respectable but still relatively small 10,000) and no suitable owner was found that would put the team in Cleveland, so the team's spot in the league was sold to George Preston Marshall, who established a team in Boston (later known as the Redskins) in the 1932 season.
That team played as the "Indians" for the 1923 season before changing its name to the Cleveland Bulldogs in 1924.
The Rams were followed by the Cleveland Browns in 1946, who played their first four seasons in the All-America Football Conference before joining the NFL in 1950.