Can the Browns win today in St. Louis against the Rams?
 
Sure. Absolutely. Why not?
 
First of all, the Rams are hardly world-beaters. They are but 2-3, just a half-game better than the 2-4 Browns. The Rams’ days as “The Greatest Show on Turf” ended long ago.
 
And the Edward Jones Dome, where they play, is not much of a home-field advantage because the Rams don’t draw well, which is one of the reasons why there is a distinct possibility that they could someday soon pack up and head back to NFL-less Los Angeles, from whence they came 20 years ago, just as the original Browns were preparing to move to Baltimore.
 
By the way, the Rams were born in 1937 in none other than Cleveland and stayed there through 1945, when they won the NFL championship and then promptly moved to the once again wide-open spaces of Los Angeles so as to not have to compete for Cleveland football fans’ hearts with the new Browns team that would begin play in 1946.
 
And just as luck would have it, when the Browns joined the NFL in 1950 after the break-up of the All-America Football Conference, they met the Rams in the title game in Cleveland and won 30-28 on a 16-yard Lou Groza field goal with 28 seconds remaining.
 
But that was decades ago. We’re talking about what’s going on in 2015.
 
The biggest reason why the Browns can – and perhaps will – win today is because of the parity in the NFL. There are extremely few lopsided victories. Most of the games come right down to the wire.
 
And just when a team seems like it can’t lose, it does. Similarly, just when a team seems like it can’t win – when, for instance, it’s been through another week of tumult, which is the case with the Browns once again – it rallies around itself and, in fighting back against the rest of the world, finds a way to win.
 
Don’t be surprised if that happens today with the Browns, which is why it amazes me that, with so much uncertainty with virtually all of the teams nearly week after week, anyone would be dumb enough to bet on these games.
 
In fact, that’s what happened the last time the Browns played the Rams in St. Louis, which was almost exactly eight years ago, on Oct. 28, 2007.
 
The Rams were 0-7 on their way to a miserable 3-13 finish and had been held to single-digits scoring in two straight games, and in four of their last five. They had tallied more than 16 points just once all season.
 
Even back then, when a team couldn’t score, it had almost no chance to win. As such, four of their previous five defeats had come by margins of 27, 19, 28 and 21 points. The Rams were a rarity in that they were mostly non-competitive.
 
As for the Browns, who were coming off their bye, they were just 3-3, but there were all kinds of signs that, especially offensively, where they had struggled so much in the expansion era (and still do now), they had perhaps turned the corner. In their last game two weeks before, they had outscored the Miami Dolphins 41-31, and in Week 2 when this metamorphosis began, they topped the heavily-favored Cincinnati Bengals by a high school basketball-like count of 51-45.
 
Considering all this, then, the Browns should have won going away, but they did not. Rallying from a 14-point, first-quarter deficit, and then needing their defense to come up big twice down the stretch in the fourth quarter, they staggered out of town with a hard-fought 27-20 triumph.
 
The Browns led 17-14 at halftime on Phil Dawson’s 35-yard field goal and two touchdown passes by Derek Anderson, a 12-yarder to wide receiver Braylon Edwards and a 21-yarder to tight end Kellen Winslow.
 
Anderson and Edwards hooked up again on a scoring pass, this time of five yards, to provide a 24-20 advantage after three quarters.
 
Dawson added a 45-yard field goal to make it 27-20, then the Browns hung on for dear life in the final minutes, stopping the Rams on fourth down-and-inches from the Cleveland 16 and intercepting a pass at the Cleveland 28.
 
The Browns had a number of finishes like that in 2007 as they made like a modern version of the Kardiac Kids. It resulted in them finishing 10-6 and just missing out on winning the AFC North title and also earning a wild-card playoff berth.
 
Anderson, who was on his way to becoming the first Browns quarterback in 20 years to make the Pro Bowl, was 18 of 25 passing for 248 yards and three TDs with no interceptions.
 
Edwards had eight catches for 117 yards and the two scores, and Mentor Lake Catholic High School product Joe Jurevicius added five receptions for 76 yards.
 
Also, Jamal Lewis, on his way to rushing for 1,304 yards in the first of his two seasons with the Browns, ran for 61 yards.
 
Yes, the Browns had a formula for winning that year, but they haven’t had it – the formula or the winning record — since. They’ve suffered through seven consecutive losing seasons and, if they can’t find a way to beat the Rams today, they may be headed for their eighth.
 
The schedule gets much tougher from here. Their next two games are against the Arizona Cardinals, who go into today with a record of 4-2, and the unbeaten Cincinnati Bengals (6-0), who have a bye.