5 NFL contenders and pretenders: Bears, Browns up for debate
By John Buhler
Cleveland Browns (4-2)
It was a disaster of a game on Sunday afternoon for the Cleveland Browns vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers. Cleveland entered play at 4-1 with a shot at a road upset over the 4-0 Steelers. Instead, the Browns got shellacked to the tune of 38-7. There’s nothing wrong with getting blown out by what appears to be an elite team in Pittsburgh, but this hurts the Browns’ overall viability.
Of their four wins this season, only one, possibly two can be considered of quality. Those would be over the Indianapolis Colts in Week 5 and over the Dallas Cowboys in Week 4, if you consider the Cowboys to be a good team. For the sake of the Browns’ argument, we will because somebody has to win the utterly rancid NFC East this year, and it’s probably going to be “America’s Team”.
But if you look at the Browns’ three other games, their two other wins are over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Washington Football Team, with their other loss being to the division rival Baltimore Ravens. And therein lies the biggest issue of all with the Browns: They are the third best team in their own division, and that’s going to be a problem for playoff contention.
Either Baltimore or Pittsburgh will win the AFC North and the other will almost certainly get in as an AFC Wild Card team. Cleveland could get in as the No. 6 or No. 7 seed. Even with the expanded field, there are formidable challengers for Wild Card positioning in the AFC across the three other divisions. 10-6 is still very much in play, but 9-7 feels likely and you can’t feel good about that.