Riddle . . .  meet enigma

For a brief moment there in the third quarter of the Browns’ 41-24 victory over the Miami Dolphins Sunday, it looked suspiciously like they were in the embryonic stages of squandering a seemingly insurmountable lead.

The really bad Dolphins looked really good for the entire third quarter and a 28-3 halftime lead the Browns crafted looked imperiled. All of a sudden, the Dolphins behind Cro-Magnon quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick crept to within 28-17.

Unease began to grip Browns Nation, even as they felt sanguine following the first 30 minutes, that the current winning streak might not reach three games. A here-we-go-again feeling nagged because they have seen this act before.

Until then, just about everything worked against a Miami defense that looked more like the Browns of 2016 and 2017, who combined for a grand total of one victory with a defense that was awful at best.

The Browns had scored touchdowns on four of their five possessions in the first half

and seemed to shift into cruise control against arguably the worst team in the National Football League.

They looked almost jaunty as Baker Mayfield fashioned his first three-touchdown game of the season – he now has thrown seven scoring passes in the Browns’ three-game win streak – with two to Jarvis Landry and the other to Odell Beckham Jr.

The first of Joe Schobert’s two picks – he now has four in the last two games – set up the fourth first-half score, Kareem Hunt scooting six yards around right end to culminate a nine-pay, 73-yard march with a minute left in the half

The injury- and suspension-riddled Cleveland defense had all the right answers against Fitzpatrick in the first 30 minutes and almost pitched a first-half shutout before the visitors broke through with a second left in the half on a Jason Sanders field goal.

That is the way it should have worked the entire game. Only it did not in the third quarter when Fitzpatrick, the ultimate NFL journeyman celebrating his 37^th birthday, narrowed the margin to 11 points on successive possessions.

He took advantage of a Mayfield pick – his first in four games – and a field-goal miss by Austin Seibert – he made two in the fourth quarter to make up for it – to give the Dolphins hope, throwing a touchdown pass to rookie tight end Mike Gesicki and scrambling eight yards for the other.

It tipped the momentum scale toward the Dolphins. But lack of talent trumped hope and the Browns regained the momentum in the final 15 minutes as the defense, playing with only one healthy regular on the defensive line, said enough and found a second gear to slam the door on the wizened Fitzpatrick.

They regained the temporarily lost momentum and managed in spite of some strange play calling by coach Freddie Kitchens. Strategy seems to have evaded the head coach’s thought process. He should not be calling plays.

Instead of pounding the football with the best running tandem in the NFL in Nick Chubb, who racked up his fifth 100-yard game of the season with 106 well-earned yards, and Hunt, who gained 27 more on eight carries, Kitchens puzzlingly chose to throw the ball.

It’s nice to mix in passing with the run game every once in a while, but when you jump out to a 28-0 lead in the first half, common sense has to kick in somewhere along the line and say no, stick to the ground game.

Mayfield, who completed 24 of 34 passes for 327 yards and the three scores, was hot – he threw 12 straight completions at one point – and seemed extremely confident. But the situation dictated running the ball and bleeding the clock. Will the man ever learn?

Kitchens and Mayfield were lucky in the fourth quarter after Schobert’s second pick in Miami territory when Mayfield’s second interception of the afternoon was nullified by a personal foul penalty on Miami. Chubb scored two plays later to push the score to 41-17.

While it’s easy to get excited about a three-game winning streak – all at home – and staying alive in the race for the postseason, you have to take into consideration the Dolphins are a terrible team and the Browns should have won.

And while it’s also easy to fool one’s self with the giddiness that pervades Browns Nation at this point, reality says don’t lose sight of the fact this defense still allowed the awful Dolphins to rally to within striking distance of the lead before normalcy returned.

No question 5-6 sounds a lot better than the disappointing and demoralizing 2-6 of a few weeks ago when all hope for the 2019 season seemed lost. If you have any designs on the playoffs in the NFL, winning in November and December is not only essential, it is mandatory, especially when you start 2-6.

Sunday’s big victory was expected, the large margin of the final notwithstanding. Mandatory begins with the next five games, all in December, and that’s when fans will find out what this team is really made of.

This victory proves only one thing. The Browns have learned how to beat bad teams badly, scoring a season high in points after averaging only 18 points a game in the previous four games.

They still remain a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. The mystery of this team continues.