For almost all of the expansion era, especially the last 10 years, there has been a gap – and a sizeable one at that – between the re-born Browns and the other teams in their division, first the AFC Central and then 2002, the AFC North.
The Browns have been looking up – way up, at that – at the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, whom they host on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium.
Last season, in finishing 3-13 for their eighth consecutive losing record, they were nine games behind the division champion Bengals (12-4) and seven games behind runner-up Pittsburgh (10-6), which made the playoffs as a wild card. That’s quite a difference in just a 16-game regular season.
When he took over last offseason, and in the months since, head coach Hue Jackson has made it clear that the first step to the Browns improving was to do better in division games. That hasn’t worked out – in either regard – thus far for the Browns, who are 0-3 in the division and 0-10 overall.
So they still have a long, long way to go.
But it may not be as long as previously thought, for while the Browns have done nothing to edge closer, the other teams have done a lot.
Once thought to be the best division in football, the North, at least just past the midway point of the season, looks to be a shell of its former self.
The Ravens, after a miserable 2015 in which they finished just 5-11, have done a 180-drgree turnaround, standing 5-4 and in first place by a game. Pittsburgh, which was the pick of a lot of people to make it to the Super Bowl, and win it, has been possibly the second-most disappointing team in the NFL, owning a very mediocre 4-5 record.
The Bengals have done even worse than that. They are the league’s biggest flop, being 3-5-1. Yes, they have a tie, which may be even worse than a loss in that it’s embarrassing not to have a winner in a 75-minute game.
Will the slump of the division’s teams continue? Or is the 2016 season to this point just an anomaly, one that will be corrected by year’s end?
We’ll find out soon enough, but at least at this point, the Browns, despite their terrible record, are closer to the North’s leaders than they’ve been in most seasons.
If they had just three or four wins, which is not a lot, they’d be in the thick of things.
In a season full of darkness, that thought is a sliver of light, a glimmer of hope.
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