Browns winless in Pittsburgh since ’03
PITTSBURGH — For a team taking just slightly over a twohour bus ride from Cleveland, the Browns come to Acrisure Stadium carrying a lot of baggage.
They have not won a regular season game here since 2003, which is just two years after the stadium opened as a giant ketchup bottle. And they did it with two touchdown passes from Tim Couch, a 75yard interception return for touchdown and holding the Steelers to just 1 of 11 third-down conversions in a 33-13 victory.
But even then, despite their dominance in that game, the Browns couldn’t finish with a better regular season record than the Steelers.
And that’s the most amazing part. Staggering, really.
When considering all the ignominious streaks that have embarrassingly unfolded over decades in the National Football League, it might be difficult to find one more incredible, more disbelieving, than this:
The Browns have not finished with a better regular season record than the Steelers in 34 years.
Think about that: Since 1989, the Browns have NEVER finished above the Steelers in the division. That was the year the Browns opened the season with a 51-0 victory at Three Rivers Stadium, the second-most lopsided season opener in league history. Bud Carson, the former Steelers defensive coordinator, was the Browns coach. Bernie Kosar was their quarterback.
Consider how long ago that really was: Barry Bonds was still the Pirates’ left fielder. Mario Lemieux had just completed a leaguebest 199-point season. Sophie Masloff became the first female to be elected mayor of Pittsburgh. And there’s a good chance a large percentage of the fans at Acrisure Stadium on Monday night weren’t even born the last time the Browns finished with a better record than the Steelers.
That is failure on an unconscionable level.
It makes the longest losing streak in NFL history — 29 consecutive games by the 1945 Chicago Cardinals, who merged with the Steelers that year — look like a mild slump.
The Browns were 9-6-1 and won the AFC Central in 1989, finishing a half-game ahead of the Steelers (97). The closest they ever came to finishing with a better record after that was 2007, Mike Tomlin’s first season as head coach, when both teams finished tied at the top of the AFC North with 10-6 records. But the Steelers were awarded the division title because they beat the Browns twice during the regular season.
Since then, the Browns came close a couple times, finishing with an 11-5 record in back-to-back seasons in 2020 and 2021, though still not enough to best the Steelers, who finished 12-4 each of those seasons. Talk about franchise baggage. On Monday night, the Browns will try to end their 19-game regular season losing streak on the North Shore. Such a run of futility, though, is nothing new in Pittsburgh. The Browns once lost 16 consecutive games from the time Three Rivers Stadium opened in 1970 until 1986.
Now, though, they will be attempting to end the most recent slide in a setting in which the Steelers have been mostly unbeatable.
In case you didn’t know, the Steelers have won their past 20 appearances at home on “Monday Night Football.” Two of those have been against the Browns — 1995 and 2022.
The last time they lost at home on Monday night was Oct. 14, 1991, a 23-20 loss to the New York Giants. Former Steelers kicker Matt Bahr converted a 44-yard field goal with four seconds remaining after quarterback Neil O’Donnell replaced an ineffective Bubby Brister and brought the Steelers back from a 20-0 deficit.
Since then, it has been mostly Steelers dominance. They have outscored their opponent in those 20 MNF games by an average of 26-11. Two were shutouts. Two went to overtime. The most recent victory was against — you guessed it — the Browns last season (26-14).
Despite all that, there isn’t a Steelers fan alive who doesn’t remember the Browns won the most important meeting of all — a 48-37 victory in a 2020 AFC wild card playoff at Acrisure Stadium, a game in which the Steelers fell behind 28-0 in the first quarter.
I’m not sure if that erases the sting of 19 consecutive regular season defeats in Pittsburgh. Maybe there is great anticipation in Cleveland after the way the Browns shut down Joe Burrow and the Bengals in Week 1. But it will likely take a little more than that to get over what they haven’t been able to do for 34 years.