Decades of scars worn by both sides as Steelers-Browns rivalry boils with playoff implications

When sports columnist Bud Shaw arrived in Cleveland in 1991, a colleague told him how captivated the city would get when the Browns were regular playoff contenders.

The Browns were only a few years removed from making seven playoff appearances in a 10-year span, including three trips to the AFC championship game.

“I thought it would be a couple more years,” to get there again, Shaw said. “Now, it’s 28 years later, and I’m still not sure we’re quite here yet, but it looks promising at least.”

That sentiment could describe the state of the Browns’ rivalry with the Pittsburgh Steelers almost as much as the team’s relevance after decades of underachievement.

The Browns make their annual visit to Heinz Field on Sunday, and they will attempt to accomplish a feat that has eluded them for 31 years. They will try to sweep the Steelers in a season series.

A season that began with so much hype, then devolved into all-too-familiar first-half disappointment for the Browns can be revived if they vanquish their AFC North rival for the second time in 17 days.

A win for the Browns would give both teams a 6-6 record but would leapfrog Cleveland ahead of the Steelers in the playoff picture.

“It will be like a playoff game,” said Tunch Ilkin, the Steelers radio color analyst and former offensive lineman for the team. “It’s going to be a very intense rivalry game with a playoff atmosphere.”

Meaningful December games at Heinz Field are nothing new to the Steelers, who have won eight division, three conference and two Super Bowl titles since the AFC North was formed in 2002.

For the Browns? Um, not so much. Not only haven’t the Browns won a single North championship, they haven’t won in Pittsburgh, regardless of month, since 2003. The Steelers are 34-7-1 against the Browns since Cleveland’s return to the NFL in 1999, and coach Mike Tomlin has beaten the Browns 20 times in 25 meetings since his hiring in 2007.

“To me, it takes two to have a rivalry,” said Freddie Kitchens, the Browns’ first-year coach. “We have to have our part. We have to do our part. That is probably not going to sit well with some people, but to me, you have to win your share to make a rivalry.”

The Browns have reached the postseason just twice since 1989, which was the last year they were the betting favorite to win a game at Pittsburgh. Both times, they were ousted from the postseason by — who else? — the Steelers, losing in the divisional rounds in 1994 and 2002. In the latter game, Cleveland blew second-half leads of 24-7 and 33-21.

The matchup Sunday will be the biggest in the regular season since ’94, when Cleveland was coached by a young Bill Belichick. When they met in December that year, the Steelers were 11-3 and the Browns 10-4. The Steelers scored a 17-7 victory and won the division title. Three weeks later, the Steelers prevailed again 29-9 in the playoffs at Three Rivers Stadium.

“Everybody in Cleveland is conditioned to know that going to Pittsburgh has produced some of the most scarring football games in the past 25 years,” said Shaw, who works for WKYC-TV after a long tenure at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Cautious optimism may be the operative term here for this game.”

It wasn’t always this way for the Browns. At the infancy of the series, the Browns treated the Steelers like gum on the bottom of their shoe, and not vice versa.

From 1950 when the Browns joined the NFL, until 1973, Cleveland owned a 35-13 advantage in the series. Until 1974, the Steelers had swept a season series just once, in 1959.

The momentum shifted the year the Steelers won their first Super Bowl. The Steelers won 11 of the next 12 meetings with the Browns while bringing the Lombardi Trophy to Pittsburgh four times in six seasons.

“Even when we had those Super Bowl teams, the rivalry was still strong,” said Rocky Bleier, the former running back who joined the Steelers in 1968. “If you got out of there with a split with Cleveland, you’d be happy.”

The tide tilted again in the ’80s when the Browns had their most sustained stretch of success since they played in seven NFL championship games, winning three, in the 1950s.

The rivalry shifted to Baltimore in 1996 when owner Art Modell relocated the Browns franchise, which was rebranded as the Ravens. When the Browns resumed play in 1999, the series with the Steelers didn’t exactly pick up where it left off. The Steelers’ domination in the series is proof positive.

“It took a number of years to revamp the same animosity and intensity that you need to fuel a rivalry,” said Craig Wolfley, the Steelers’ sideline analyst and former offensive lineman. “Restarting a rivalry is not like restarting a car.”

Along the way, the Browns suffered indignation after indignation at the hands of the Steelers.

In 2004, Cleveland famously passed on quarterback and Ohio native Ben Roethlisberger in the first round of the NFL Draft, selecting tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. with the No. 6 overall selection. Five picks later, the Steelers drafted Roethlisberger, whose 11 wins in Cleveland as a visiting quarterback are more than any Browns passer since the franchise’s return 20 years ago.

And, starting with Romeo Crennel in 2008, the past six Browns coaches have been fired within a day of losing to the Steelers in the second meeting of a season. Most of the losses occurred in Pittsburgh, which led to an awkward drive back up the turnpike for the lame-duck coach.

“Coming there, it was like there was a sign outside the stadium that said, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here,’ ” Shaw said.

Kitchens looked like he might be the seventh coach to go when the Browns, viewed as the darling preseason pick behind second-year quarterback Baker Mayfield, running back Nick Chubb and newly acquired wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., got off to a 2-6 start.

It was a letdown for a fan base that watched the Browns go from 0-16 in 2017 to 7-8-1 last year.

“It really put a damper on this town for good reason,” Shaw said. “I think people thought maybe we’re not nearly as close as we thought we were.”

But the Browns showed resiliency lacking in previous regimes by reeling off three consecutive wins and beating the Steelers, 21-7, on Nov. 14 at FirstEnergy Stadium for their first victory in the rivalry since 2014.

Helmet-to-helmet hits by Browns defensive backs knocked Steelers wide receivers JuJu Smith-Schuster and Diontae Johnson out of the game.

“There were a lot of shots, a lot of physicality,” Wolfley said. “I was watching the thing down there (on the sideline), and it was a hard-fought game. The way it culminated was unfortunate.”

Tempers boiled over with eight seconds left in the game during a fight in which Myles Garrett ripped off Mason Rudolph’s helmet and hit the Steelers quarterback on his unprotected head. Garrett was suspended indefinitely.

“The incident with Garrett really stole the joy of beating the Steelers from the fans,” Bleier said. “All of sudden, everything focused on one play at the end that got national attention. It provided a revenge motive for coming into this week’s game.”

Revenge for whom is the question. For the Steelers, it’s a chance to win the rematch and maintain the No. 6 spot in the AFC playoff positioning. For the Browns, it’s a chance to win a fourth consecutive game and make good on those lofty preseason expectations.

“I think we understand what this game means to us and to our season,” Kitchens said.

For the rivalry, a win also is a chance for the Browns to show the balance of power in the series has shifted away from the three rivers and back in the direction of Lake Erie.