Lulled to lose

Well, the Browns found out how they play in a meaningful football game in Pittsburgh Sunday.

Back to the drawing board.

They aren’t ready. They aren’t nearly ready. Not after squandering a 10-0 lead in a 20-13 loss to the Steelers, snapping a three-game winning streak and losing their 16th straight game in the Steel City.

Browns Nation’s misery continues as this luckless franchise will finish its 17^th straight season at home watching the postseason even though it is (ever so slightly) statistically possible they get in, In order to do that, they would have to win out and hope someone else stumbles along the way. A 9-7 record is at best a long shot.

In the process, the Browns discovered they still don’t know how to beat young unproven National Football League quarterbacks. In week nine, it was journeyman Brandon Allen making his NFL starting debut in Denver. Sunday, it was Devlin Hodges, an undrafted rookie making his second NFL start, doing the honors.

The Jekyll-Hyde Browns toyed with the emotions of their fans as they looked like a well-oiled machine on both sides of the football for the first 22½ minutes, taking the 10-0 lead on a Kareem Hunt touchdown following a short pass by Baker Mayfield.

At that point, the Browns owned the football for nearly 17½ minutes and had compiled 147 yards of offense to the Steelers’ nine. That’s how dominant they were.

Meaningful football kinda looked relatively easy at that point and the first season sweep against the Steelers since 1988 seemed almost inevitable. Almost. The Steelers were playing like the Browns of the last two decades.

The Pittsburgh defense had no answers for Mayfield & Co., while Hodges looked like an undrafted rookie making only his second start on the first two series. It seemed almost too easy.

And then the Browns flipped a switch. The offense shut down and the defense, which put precious little pressure on Hodges throughout the game, began to bend, yielding a field goal by Chris Boswell and a sensational 30-yard touchdown catch by James Washington on the Steelers’ final two possessions of the first half.

The Steelers made it four straight scoring possessions on their only drives of the third quarter, Washington providing a 44-yard reception against Denzel Ward en route to a nine-play, 69-yard  drive culminated by a one-yard Benny Snell Jr. run. Boswell’s second field goal on the next possession made it 20-10.

Mayfield calls such sudden slumbers lulls. The dictionary defines a lull as “a temporary interval of quiet or lack of activity.” Yep, that about nails it. My definition: Prohibiting the chance to win a football game.

With one notable exception, this lull lasted until Mayfield threw a pass well behind Jarvis Landry that wound up in the arms of ex-Brown Joe Haden in the final minute of regulation as the Browns desperately tried to level the score with 95 seconds left.

Mayfield temporarily scared Browns fans when he exited the game late in the second quarter when the back of his right hand connected with the facemask of Steelers linebacker Bud Dupree as he delivered a desperation heave in the waning seconds of the second quarter. He missed only two snaps.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the offense came alive as Mayfield, playing with a white glove on his throwing hand, connected on three straight passes with Odell Beckham Jr., Nick Chubb and Demetrius Harris that covered 63 yards to the Pittsburgh 14.

The lull reappeared with three straight incomplete passes, including one the 6-7 Harris failed to hold on to as the ball squirted out of his hands as they hit the ground. Austin Seibert salvaged the possession with his second field goal of the game.

The Browns got a break when Terrence Mitchell on the very next play picked off Hodges, who overthrew Diontae Johnson, and returned the ball to the Steelers’ 30 with 7:18 left in regulation.

Great field position. A swell of momentum. Another chance at redemption. And then another offensive lull.

An incomplete pass, a short pass to Hunt that gained nothing and a sack by Pittsburgh nose tackle Javon Hargrave. That, for all practical purposes, was the ball game, although Browns fans, even those who held out hope until the end, must have known this one was over at that point.

What initially looked like an easy victory was not only slipping away, it looked so much like other Browns-Steelers games when the Browns always did something to lose games that the inevitability factor kicked in.

The statistics bear strong evidence why the Steelers knocked the Browns down to 5-7 and enhanced their chances of returning to the postseason after missing out last season.

The Cleveland offense mustered only seven first downs in the final 30 minutes; the Steelers had 11. The Browns gained only 96 yards in the second half (63 on those three straight long completions); the Steelers gained 178. The Browns had the ball only 12:35 in the second half; the Steelers had it for 17:25.

The only positive that emerged from this game was that the Browns are getting closer. Closer to what is not exactly known at this time, but at least this edition of the Browns shows glimpses of what could be fun in the future. They are no longer the laughingstock of the NFL. Those days, it would appear, are completely gone.

The outcome of the final four games, however, just might determine the fate of coach Freddie Kitchens. If the Browns do not win at least three of those games, his tenure in Cleveland could last as long as Rob Chudzinski, who was dismissed after just one season.

If there was any question as to whether this talented team has underachieved since the beginning of the season, it was answered by the disappointing performance Sunday in Pittsburgh. It was a game they had to win.

They didn't.