Browns stun Steelers in road win
Fireworks lit up the Cleveland sky late Sunday night after the Browns won their first playoff game since 1994 under unprecedented and impossible circumstances.
Browns first-year head coach Kevin Stefanski was sitting quarantined in his house due to a positive COVID-19 test, unable to communicate with his team, replaced on the sideline by special teams coach Mike Priefer.
The Browns had practiced only once all week on Friday due to the league’s protocols to guard against a virus outbreak.
They had lost 17 straight games at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field dating back to 2003. They hadn’t been in the playoffs since 2002.
They hadn’t won in the postseason since before the franchise’s 1999 restart, four years after Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore, leaving Cleveland without a pro
football team for three seasons.
But a record 28-point first quarter catapulted Cleveland to a 48-37 victory over the Steelers, and now the sixseed Browns are on to face the reigning Super Bowl champions: Patrick Mahomes and the AFC’s top-seed Kansas City Chiefs.
“I want to congratulate our fans,” Priefer, 54, a Cleveland native, said after the win. “I grew up one of them. I know what it means.”
Even with Stefanski helping to prepare the team remotely through Zoom during the week, the Browns had plenty to overcome once they reached the field.
Three-time Pro Bowl left guard Joel Bitonio was also sidelined due to a positive COVID-19 test. Starting right tackle Jack Conklin went down with an ankle injury in the first half.
Undrafted and former AAF/XFL guard Michael Dunn made his first career start in Bitonio’s place and played extremely well. Then when Dunn got hurt in the second half, a recent signing off the Jets’ practice squad named Blake Hance stepped in.
How new was Hance to the team? “Michael got hurt and a guy named Blake that I introduced myself to literally in the locker room before the game stepped up in the fourth quarter,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said.
The wisdom of the NFL’s decision to press through this pandemic with no bubble, leading to health risks and competitive imbalance, will warrant debate long into the future.
Interestingly, though, the Browns weren’t the team that looked like they hadn’t practiced most of the week.
Mike Tomlin’s Steelers were an absolute train wreck, concluding a season they had started 11-0 by losing five of their final six games. The Browns defense scored a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage.