This is a story about culture, and the lack thereof.

The Browns are still trying to build their culture, that is a belief in a set of circumstances and surroundings that make you believe that you can win, no matter what. They are doing better under head coach Kevin Stefanski and General Manager Andrew Berry running things, but they still have a ways to go.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, who have a mediocre quarterback and a less-than/mediocre offense overall, have a great culture. It starts with ownership and goes right down the the organizational flow chart, including Mike Tomlin, one of the best head coaches in the game.

With that, then, they came from way back to defeat the Baltimore Ravens 17-10 on Sunday. They shouldn’t have won the game, but they willed themselves to do it.

And the Ravens, under head coach John Harbaugh, have a tremendous culture, but they took their foot off the gas pedal against the Steelers and ended up paying for it.

The San Francisco 49ers, who play the Browns next Sunday at Cleveland Browns Stadium, have a wonderful culture, too. One of the key figures in that culture is head coach Kyle Shanahan, who was the offendive coordinator of the Browns a decade ago but left because of all the dysfunction in the organization then. How different history might be if he had stayed and been promoted to head coach. Perhaps he would have been able to do in Cleveland what he is doing now in San Francisco.

We’ll will never know, but we have all the knucklehead people who were running the Browns back then to thank for him running out of town.

Steve King