Were those impostors?

Okay, will the real Cleveland Browns please step forward? No, not you guys who dragged a four-game losing streak into Monday night's home game against the surging Cincinnati Bengals. 

I'm talking about the team that showed up in front of a national television audience and delivered a didn't-see-that-coming 32-13 beatdown of the Bengals, looking nothing like the highly disappointing and underachieving crew that struggled through their first seven games.

What the TV audience witnessed was a team that played upper echelon football for the first time this season on both sides of the football from the first snap to well into the fourth quarter. These Browns, not those other ones, took a 25-0 lead into the fourth quarter.

The offense was sharp with quarterback Jacoby Brissett unfurling without question his best performance of the season, directing four touchdown drives with exquisite precision. If he played anything like this in the first seven games, the Browns wouldn't be 3-5 now heading into the bye week.

As much as the offense manhandled the Cincinnati defense, scoring with relative ease in the second half after taking an 11-0 halftime lead on a first of Nick Chubb's two touchdowns and a 55-yard field goal by Cade York, it was the Browns' much-maligned defense that was the star of the evening.

Playing undoubtedly their most aggressive game of the season against the hottest offense in the league coming in, they made Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow look average rather than one of the bright young stars in the National Football League.

Burrow, now winless against the Browns in four tries, came into the game on the heels of a 481-yard, three-touchdown performance last Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. Even though he was without Ja'Marr Chase, out with hip problems, it was thought he would have few problems against a Cleveland secondary without Denzel Ward.

Instead, he was forced to throw mostly underneath with checkdown, swing, dump and flat passes that gained minimal yards and forced a trio of three-and-outs. He threw for only 232 yards and a pair of meaningless late touchdowns.

He faced a relentless pass rush that dropped him five times and narrowly missed him on at least two other occasions, while the run defense, gouged for nearly 700 yards in the previous four games, limited the Bengals to just 36 yards on the ground. Bengals running back Joe Mixon was a non-factor.

Leading the assault into the Cincinnati backfield behind a leaky Bengals offensive line were Myles Garrett, who had one sack and shared another with Taven Bryan, rookie Isaiah Thomas, newcomer Deon Jones and the ubiquitous linebacker Sione Takitaki in easily his best game as a pro.

Playing in place of the injured Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, No. 44 totaled 13 tackles (six solo) and was seemingly in the same area code of the football a major portion of the evening. He epitomized the aggressive nature of that side of the ball.

This team was stoked on defense. Rarely did runners break free. With few exceptions, receivers had close company when Burrow connected. The tackling was superb. Best all season. This team looked like impostors compared to those who showed up for the first seven games.

This was a beatdown in every sense of the word. The Bengals never threatened in the first half and the early stages of the second half. Their first seven possessions of the game netted just 97 yards in 37 plays. 

Coverage by the Cleveland secondary was sticky, forcing Burrow to throw into shuttered windows when he threw beyond the line of scrimmage. With Chase out, the Browns successfully shut down Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd until each scored meaningless touchdowns to make the final look more respectable.

Would Chase have made a difference? Maybe. But the way this defense played, it would have been extremely difficult for him. This group was determined to make this a statement game. The effort they put forth reflected that and was amply rewarded.

As for the Cleveland offense, remember that wonderful statistic the Bengals brought into the game? The one that pointed out their defense hadn't given up a second-half touchdown all season? Yeah, that one. It went bye-bye on the Browns' first possession of the second half.

In fact, it went bye-bye big-time with touchdowns on the next two possessions The offense's first three drives of the half required 27 plays, totaled 218 yards and took 19:06 off the game clock. Scoring honors went to Brissett on a scramble, Chubb and Amari Cooper on a beautiful connection from four yards out.

Seemingly inspired by the defense, the offense wore down the Cincinnati defense in the process and kept the offense tethered to the bench. The Bengals owned the football for only seven minutes and 25 seconds in the final 30 minutes.

Brissett was brilliant, throwing with rarely-seen accuracy for 278 yards while fashioning his second straight game without an interception. He connected with Cooper on bombs of 18, 27, 53 and 29 yards and Donovan Peoples-Jones on strikes of 37 and 25 yards.

Chubb busted a two-game drought without a 100-yard game with No. 5 on the season, a 101-yard effort that featured, as usual, about 70 of those yards after contact. It was an evening where just about everything Kevin Stefanski dialed up worked as it was drawn up in the playbook.

So does this stunning result signify a resuscitation has begun as the club teetered on the brink of playoff elimination and many similar replications await down the road, especially with the return of Deshaun Watson just four games away?

Stay tuned and find out whether the Browns who showed up Monday night will re-emerge after the week off.