By STEVE KING

Browns fans look forward to the games each week.
If not, then they wouldn’t be fans.
But I’m especially excited for Sunday’s game against the host New England Patriots.
Yes, of course, it’s a key game in the ultra-tight AFC playoff hunt for two hungry 5-4 teams. But the sidebar stories are endless.
There’s the newbie head coach of the Browns, Kevin Stefanski, who got the job because of his offensive resume, matching wits with the grizzled — and grizzly-demeanored — head coach of the Patriots and former head coach of the Patriots in Bill Belichick, who, despite his being indelibly linked to his ex-quarterback, Tom Brady, got his first job in Cleveland 30 years ago because of his defensive acumen.
Stefanski will likely be minus one of the best backs in the game in Nick Chubb, and a lightning-fast rookie back/receiver in Demetric Felton, who have both been tackled for a loss by the coronavirus, so he will have to do some things differently.
As such, then, if they can go into Foxborough and get the win against the red-hot Patriots, who always play well at home, then it would be a huge step forward for the Browns.
It was exactly 20 years ago, in 2001, when the resurgent Browns, coming off a 3-13 season, and the resurgent Pats, coming off a 5-11 mark, including a loss in Cleveland, in Belichick’s first season, met at the old stadium up there while the new one was being built next door amidst all the mud and a young quarterback by the name of Tom Brady led his team to a 27-16 win. No one knew it then, or even could imagine it, but the Patriots would go on that year to win the first of their string of Super Bowls while Cleveland would slump to a 7-9 finish in their first season under head coach Butch Davis.
But here’s the most interesting sidebar of the day as I stand back and look at it, and it is that when Belichick was fired by the Browns after the 1995 season, which turned out to be the last for the original franchise in Cleveland before its move to Baltimore to become the Ravens, all the so-called media experts, of which I was a part, were convinced that he would never be a head coach in the NFL again. We would have bet everything we owned — and were paying on — that he was c’est finis.
Now, look at the guy. He might be the greatest of all-time.
So, the moral of the story is this: No matter what happens on Sunday, there will be a bunch of holier-than-thou media types who will demagogue this opinion and that opinion. “Take it to the bank,” they’ll say.
Well, don’t, unless you want to be broke, because 20 years from now, people will look back at this game and say, “Wow! Who saw that coming?”
And that’s the most fun part of it all trying to figure out what that will be.