A while back we talked about the necessity of the Browns doing well in the AFC North if they want to do well overall. It’s obvious when you consider the fact that those six games – home-and-homes with the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers – make up nearly 38 percent of their schedule every year.

Today we’re going to touch briefly on the other necessary ingredient for the Browns to be a winner: the ability to be successful at home. That’s even more obvious because a full half of the schedule – eight games – is at home.

In the days of the original franchise, the Browns almost always did well at old Cleveland Stadium, even when they weren’t doing well overall. The Browns won 62 percent of its games there over their 50-year existence. As such, opponents hated coming to Cleveland. They knew that their chances to go home with a victory were not good.

That’s certainly not the case now. The switch has been flipped, with these new Browns winning only about 32 percent of their home games – and losing 68 percent — since returning to the field in 1999. Even in 2002, when the Browns went 9-7 and made their only playoff appearance of the expansion era, they were just 3-5 at home.

The Dallas Cowboys, who visit the Browns on Sunday, have no qualms at all about coming to FirstEnergy Stadium. There is no road-field disadvantage, as it were, for them. It’s almost as if they were playing at a neutral site.

We’ll watch what the Browns do on Sunday, but at least at this time, after blowing a 20-0 first-quarter lead to Baltimore early in the season and a 20-7 halftime advantage to the New York Jets last Sunday, they are still a far cry from being able to turn FirstEnergy Stadium into a Dawg Pound with some real bite.