THE BROWNS ARE MUCH BETTER, BUT STILL HAVE LOTS OF ROOM TO GROW

By STEVE KING

After enjoying their bye over the weekend, it’s back to work for the Browns as they begin to prepare for Sunday’s game against the Houston Texans at FirstEnergy Stadium.

That will mark the start of the second half of the season. So at 5-3 and with eight games left, just where are the Browns?

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In a nutshell, they are much better than they were last season, or just about any other season in this pathetic expansion era, but not yet where they want to be, need to be, or will be in a year or two. They’re right between the two extremes, in the still formative portion of a rebuild that just might work after many failed attempts.
They have a lot of weapons on offense, and a good offense overall with that line, but their defense is bad. It needs a lot of work.

So the Browns have their work cut out for them.

Can they make the playoffs this year? Yes, they can, certainly. But will they? I will say this much, that they are either going to just squeak in as a wild card, or just get squeezed out of a berth. It could go either way.

I talked about the 1980 Kardiac Kids Browns in my last post, and this team is not that one. It is more like the teams in the two seasons leading up to that 1980 season, going 8-8 in 1978 in their first year under head coach Sam Rutigliano, and then 9-7 the next season, In both years, especially the latter one, they came up just  of making the playoffs as a wild card. They had good players, but just not enough of them yet.

Also, do you remember the 1985 Browns under Marty Schottenheimer in his first full season as head coach, and with a rookie quarterback by the name of Bernie Kosar? They had an up-and-down year, finishing 8-8 but winning the AFC Central title. They really took off in 1986, going 12-4 to win the division again, this time also securing home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.The 1986 season marked the first of three trips to the AFC Championship Game in four years.

If fans can be patient for a year or, at most two, the Browns could be ready to go on a sustained run as a real force in the AFC. But they’re definitely not there right now.