A safety, field goal and a 5-0 Browns win.

YOU’VE GOT TO HAND IT TO BROWNS DEFENSE, AND LADY LUCK

By STEVE KING

There has been a lot of hype around the Browns in the last five months or so, beginning in free agency, picking up steam in the NFL Draft and continuing right through training camp and the preseason.

On Thursday night, the country got to see if that hype was deserved, or the figment of people’s imaginations, when the Browns, coming off an 0-16 record last year and a 1-31 mark over the last two seasons, hosting the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles at FirstEnergy Stadium in a nationally-televised preseason game.



Yes, a matchup of the worst team in the league last season against the best – the very bottom against the very top, No. 32 vs. No. 1.

What viewers saw, no doubt to their great surprise, was that the much-ballyhooed first-team Cleveland offense still needs a lot of work. That group is not really ready for primetime – not even close to it.

But also much to their astonishment, I am certain, what they found out as well was that the first-team defense, the part of the team that no one was paying attention to, is much deserving of the national spotlight because it is pretty darn good. It can carry the Browns until the offense figures it out .

That’s what a 5-0 Browns win will do for you.

It may be the first time since their 8-0 victory over the Buffalo Bills at Cleveland in that successful 2007 season, that the Browns won a game by scoring no touchdowns, just a safety and a field goal(s). The only other time it happened in team history came when the Browns beat the New York Giants 8-3 at Cleveland in a 1950 American Conference playoff game.

Whatever the case, what happened Thursday left the young, rebuilding Browns (2-1) ever more hopeful, despite the sputtering offensive performance, and the veteran, battle-tested Eagles (0-3), for which the bar has obviously been set extremely high, very concerned if not bordering on a little bit of panicked about a first-team offense that, throughout the preseason, hasn’t been able to get out of its own way.

But give credit to the Browns for the Eagles struggling offensively. Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams has to be thrilled.

Offensive coordinator Todd Haley, though disappointed with the performance of his guys, has to nonetheless be thrilled, too, that a first-half left wrist injury suffered by starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor is apparently not as serious as it first appeared since he re-entered the game early in the second quarter.

Yes, the Browns caught a real break – they got extremely lucky — on that one.

So maybe – just maybe – this thing is finally turning a little bit after all these nightmarish seasons in the expansion era.

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