The NFL had a chance to make Browns-Steelers the centerpiece of Week 8, and it passed.
According to Rob Tornoe of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the league looked at moving Cleveland’s trip to Pittsburgh out of the 1 p.m. EST slot and onto Sunday Night Football. Instead, it kept Eagles-Commanders in prime time, even though both teams are set to enter Week 8 with losing records.
That decision landed with a shrug from anyone watching the AFC North right now. After Week 7, the Browns and Steelers sit atop the division at 5-2, with Cleveland owning the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The Bengals are hanging close at 4-2, and the Ravens are right there too at 4-3. This division has become appointment viewing.
The Browns, especially, have turned into weekly chaos theater. Sunday’s win over the Titans gave Deshaun Watson his fifth game-winning drive in seven games this season, which leads the NFL. ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi noted it’s the most by a Browns quarterback in a single season this century.
“We got to give the fans something to watch and enjoy,” Browns cornerback Denzel Ward said after the win in Nashville. “It boosts the NFL ratings, so I know they loving that.”
Ward wasn’t wrong to point out what Cleveland has become. The Browns opened the season with a rough loss in Jacksonville, but after that it’s been a steady stream of dramatic finishes, weird swings, and late-game rescues.
There was the weather delay in Tampa Bay that stretched past two hours before Cleveland finished off Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers with a late defensive stand. There was the home opener at Huntington Bank Field, when the Browns shut down Carolina’s high-powered passing game and escaped with a three-point win. There was the first matchup with Pittsburgh, where Aaron Rodgers helped the Steelers erase a 14-point deficit before Watson answered with a game-winning field goal drive in the final minute.
Even the Browns’ loss to the Jets fit the same script. It came in steady rain and turned into a fourth-quarter scramble before Cleveland followed it with back-to-back wins over the Ravens and Titans on walk-off style finishes.
For a team with a head coach in Todd Monken who curses like a sailor, a young roster with plenty of personality, and a quarterback playing his best football in at least five years after two separate surgeries to repair a torn Achilles tendon, this season has been a weekly show.
And yet the NFL still left Browns-Steelers in the afternoon window, while Eagles-Commanders got the spotlight.
In Other News...
Browns Set Up A Huge Steelers Showdown With First Place At Stake
The Browns Week 7 win over the Titans kept them in a familiar place for this point in October, sitting atop the AFC North at 5-2 and putting the division race squarely on their next game. Around them, the playoff picture in the AFC is already tightening, and the standings only sharpen the importance of every head-to-head matchup inside the division.
Pittsburgh now waits in Week 8 for a rematch that carries first place on the line, which is exactly the kind of late-October game that starts to tell you who is for real. The bigger league-wide backdrop is just as interesting, with both the AFC North and NFC North featuring all four teams above .500, a reminder that the division race in Cleveland is unfolding inside one of the NFLs deepest neighborhoods. [Read more 🡒]
Deshaun Watson May Have Finally Changed What Was Holding Browns Back
Deshaun Watsons most encouraging afternoon of the season may have been less about the box score than the way it looked while it was happening. In the Browns win over the Titans, Watson completed 70 percent of his passes on a season-high 36 attempts, and the bigger takeaway was the way he played within the offense. He looked more decisive, got rid of the ball faster and helped Cleveland find a rhythm that had been missing for much of the year.
The adjustment appears to have started after that rough first half in Week 6, when the offense seemed to hit a wall. Since then, Watson has leaned more on the passing game and less on his legs, a shift that has fit better under Todd Monken and made Clevelands attack look far more functional. The question now is whether this was a one-game reset or the start of a real change in how the Browns want to move forward. [Read more 🡒]
Spencer Fano Is Giving Browns Fans Real Hope Up Front
The Browns got an encouraging look up front in their Week 7 win over the Titans, when rookie left tackle Spencer Fano put together his best Pro Football Focus grade of the season at 92.2. Fano has started every game at left tackle so far, and the performance mattered because it came against a Tennessee defensive line that has given plenty of teams problems.
For Cleveland, the bigger picture is what Fano might become if this level of play starts showing up more often. The Browns have been searching for stability on the offensive line, and a young tackle who can handle tough matchups while growing into the job would go a long way toward solving part of that puzzle. [Read more 🡒]