NAME THAT TUNE? IT’S CONFIDENCE

By STEVE KING

Confidence.

It’s the thing that sometimes – many times, probably – separates the winners from the losers in sports.

And that includes football, and the NFL variety of it.

Do the Browns have confidence against the Pittsburgh Steelers heading into Sunday’s regular-season finale at FirstEnergy Stadium?

That depends on how you look at it.

When it comes to the overall series with the Steelers, the Browns have struggled mightily throughout the expansion era, especially in regulasr-season finales. So, in that vein, there’s obviously no way that the Browns could have confidence against Pittsburgh.

But consider this: The Browns haven’t lost to the Steelers in Cleveland since 2017, and that time by only 21-18. The Browns won 21-7 at FirstEnergy Stadium last season, while the teams tied 21-21 in 2018. Considering that, then, the Browns have some confidence against the Steelers at Cleveland. They have made FirstEnergy Stadium a tough place to play for the Steelers, which is what the Browns have to continue doing – only better – if they want to get to where they want to go. It’s the way that division play works, particularly in the tough, competitive AFC North.

It was that way, too, in the North’s predecessor, the AFC Central, including in the last half of the 1980s with the Browns, especially against the Steelers.

En route to making three AFC Championship Game appearances, the Browns won four straight games in Pittsburgh from 1986-89. They were 3-1 against the Steelers at home, giving them a 7-1 overall record against them during that time.

“The Steelers weren’t really our rivals then,” former Browns wide receiver Brian Brennan told me some years ago. “It was the Denver Broncos.

So, yeah, those Browns had great confidence when they played   Pittsburgh.

And there was no better example of that than in the 1987 regular-season finale against the Steelers at Heinz Field. The Browns had dominated Pittsburgh 34-10 in Week 2 in the teams’ first meeting, but the rematch was much, much closer, with Cleveland clinging to a 19-13 lead in a nationally-televised Saturday afternoon game as it took over possession of the ball in the fourth quarter. With the Houston Oilers right on their heels, the Browns needed to win the game in order to win the division title. And to win the game, the Browns had to keep the ball long enough to run out the clock and keep Pittsburgh from getting the ball back with a chance to win.

The fans back home in Northeast Ohio watching on TV were nervous, but not the Browns. They never doubted themselves. In a TV timeout before the derive started, the Browns, standing on the field in a loose huddle, entertained themselves by playing “Name That Tune” with the songs playing on the stadium’s public address system.

Now, that’s confidence.

Let’s hope the Browns have some of that on Sunday.