By STEVE KING

This is something I’ve brought up in this space several times previously, and this is a good time — unfortunately so — to bring it up again as the Browns, their playoff chances hanging by a thread, host the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday in a game they absolutely, positively have to win if they are to return to the postseason for a second straight season for the first time since 1988-89.
It is that, despite all the ballyhoo about this season, it might have been last year that was set up by the football gods for the Browns to soar.
I gasped as I thought to myself, “This is it, this is the moment, for the window of opportunity is wide open and the stars have all aligned in just the right way for the Browns to pull off the stunner of all stunners,” after they intercepted Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Chad Henne in the end zone and got the ball back trailing just 22-17 in the fourth quarter in the AFC divisional playoffs.
The Browns, after falling behind 19-3 at halftime, rallied to get back into the game and had the Chiefs, minus quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who left with a foot injury, on the run. The momentum was so much in the Browns’ favor. They would get the ball back at their 20 coming out of the TV timeout, and there was every expectation that they would march down the field for the go-ahead — and probably winning — touchdown.
But the drive quickly fizzled, and then the Browns defense let Henne — of all people — beat them on two two successive plays to get an improbable first down to melt the clock and secure the win.
The game was right there for the Browns to win — the Chiefs were ready to be had — and they couldn’t get it done. This had The Drive written all over it, only in a less dynamic way.
When the window of opportunity opens up nice and wide for you, and you don’t jump through it, then the football gods go on to another team the following season. And I think that team for 2021 is the New England Patriots, who have come out of nowhere to surge to the top of the AFC with a month to play.
Perhaps the Browns can still get it done this year and make all those predictions come true about this being their year, but I just don’t see it. Moreover, I’ve never seen it since the end of that Chiefs game last season.
Wait until next year?
Well, yeah, probably so, again.