RETURNEES BOOST BROWNS DOWN THE STRETCH

By STEVE KING

In a couple of ways, Sunday is the day for which the Browns have long waited.

They are 5-3 and coming off their bye week at the halfway point of their season as they get ready to take on the 2-6 Houston Texans at 1 p.m. at FirstEnergy Stadium. That’s extraordinarily huge for a team that hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2002 and hasn’t even finished with a winning record since 2007.

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Indeed, if someone had said before the year that the Browns could be in this situation, right in the thick of the AFC wild-card playoff chase with just eight games to go, especially since the expectation was that they would start slowly and then pick up steam in the second half of the year, everybody at team headquarters in Berea and fans throughout Northeast Ohio and beyond would have sounded a resounding, “Yes, we’ll take it right now. Sign us up.”

The chorus of happiness would have been even louder if they were told the Browns had done this without a lot of help from some of their most important players, particularly on offense in the persons of running back Nick Chubb, guard Wyatt Teller, tight end Austin Hooper and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

And that leads us to the second reason why the Browns have been looking forward to Sunday. While Beckham will be out for the year after suffering a torn ACL, Teller and Hooper will both play for sure against Houston, and Chubb is also almost a given to be out there. The last three players had health issues as well. That prolific Browns offense is nearly whole again – as whole as it will get for the rest of the season – and it is hoped the boost from that will be just what the club needs to get on a real roll heading down the home stretch.

The Browns certainly need that, and it starts today with a home game against a struggling Texans team they should beat.