Are the Browns far removed from the rest of the teams in the AFC North, as their 0-16 record this season would seem to suggest?
Or are they closer than we think, which seems far-fetched to ask based, again, on that winless mark?
Or – and how’s this for riding the fence? – are they somewhere in between?
Those are great questions. They really are. For until the Browns get competitive in their own division, they have no chance to be competitive overall.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were 13-3 and dominated the division again this year, but with the way they got pushed around – dominated, really — in Sunday’s divisional loss, you have to wonder if their era might be coming to a close sooner rather than later.
Or was it just a misstep in that, for some unexplainable reason, the second-seeded Steelers actually looked past the No. 3 Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that had blistered their backside to the tune of 30-9 during the regular season?
The Baltimore Ravens had a playoff berth in their hip pocket but let it slip away with a bad, last-minute loss to a lousy Cincinnati Bengals team in the finale. So did they just misstep, too, or is that near-miss going to be their last hurrah for a while?
And as for the Bengals, they have been getting worse every year as their talent base has dwindled appreciably. Their time seems to have come and gone. Andy Dalton has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is not the quarterback to take a team even one step into the playoffs, and the Bengals are stuck with him because of his contract.
But the Bengals play like world-beaters against the Browns, so if they can’t get any closer than that to Cincinnati, the third-best team in the division, how can head coach Hue Jackson’s team expect to close the gap on Baltimore and Pittsburgh?
