CLEVELAND, Ohio — Draft picks don’t matter. Next year can wait. The Cleveland Browns aren’t going to the playoffs this season, but their fans are parading down West 3rd Street, anyways.
Because the Pittsburgh Steelers lost a football game 24-19 on Thursday Night. Even better, Cleveland beat them. Amazing what one win over an archrival can do for a city. But I wonder what it can do for the coach.
Counting Thursday’s win, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski is 5-5 against the Steelers, a 10-game stretch that no Browns coach has matched since Marty Schottenheimer. In college football, fans know these stats by heart. In the league full of nameless, faceless opponents, we count division records and call it a day.
But we still savor moments. Twenty-four hour rule, right? And the moment running back Nick Chubb gave Cleveland the lead on a 2-yard touchdown run with 57 seconds to play, dopamine levels across the region spiked.
Bad football is hard to watch. And these Browns, who entered this week with the best gambling odds to finish with the NFL’s worst record, play a brand of ball that deserves harsher language.
But one of the worst parts of this season, like so many others, has been being reminded twice a year how much different it should be. That Pittsburgh (8-2) and Cleveland (2-8) entered Thursday with opposite records was a cruel kind of football poetry. One franchise never finishes with a losing record. The other always finds a way to lose.
This time, the formula called for two fourth-quarter turnovers and, apparently, a pile of snow the size of Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson. Running back Nick Chubb, who scored a touchdown Thursday after tearing his ACL against the Steelers last season, added a pinch of would-be redemption. And Jameis Winston’s fourth-down touchdown run with 12:23 to play, which gave Cleveland an 18-6 lead, added enough false hope to kill a horse.
Not Browns fans, though. They’ve built an immunity over the years. They smell an ugly loss 100 yards away. In Thursday’s case, Wilson drove 69 to cut Cleveland’s lead from 12 to five. Then he found Calvin Austin for a 19-yard touchdown just 50 seconds after Winston fumbled.
We all know what comes next. Or at least, we used to. But since Cleveland hired Stefanski in 2020, the same ol’ Browns have surprised us every once in a while. Nobody saw the 2020 playoff run. Nobody thought Joe Flacco was a functional quarterback this time last season. And nobody thought the Browns were beating the Steelers on Thursday night.
Of course, nobody saw the Browns starting this season 2-8, either. And no one who’s suffered through this season cares much about what Stefanski has done before it. Some have wondered if the Browns need a coaching change to reach their potential in 2025.
But many bad Browns teams before this one have fallen short of expectations. Many of those same bad teams have tried to play spoiler against the Steelers. And almost all of them have failed.
Stefanski’s worst team, on the other hand? They paused all tank talk by beating the AFC North leaders. They proved that not all Cleveland football scripts end the same. And while this season remains a clunker for which the coach should shoulder blame, he also reminded Browns fans of an important message Thursday night.
The Steelers suck. You always believe it. But Stefanski proves it about once a year since he arrived in Cleveland.
My question to the parading, snow-plowing Browns fans, is how much favor that wins a coach.
Football Insider newsletter free trial: Take a minute and sign up for a free trial of our Football Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive content from cleveland.com’s Browns reporters.