The Browns are finally getting their first true night game of the 2025 season, and it comes with a chance to keep the momentum rolling.
Cleveland hosts Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday Night Football with a three-game winning streak in reach, and the matchup brings a familiar edge. The Browns have already shown they can handle Pittsburgh, too. In their last meeting, Cleveland’s defense shut down the Steelers’ offense and kept Rodgers out of the end zone in a 13-6 win at Huntington Bank Field.
That result is part of why Browns fans have reason to feel good heading into this one. Pittsburgh arrives with a new head coach in Mike McCarthy and a 42-year-old Rodgers at quarterback, but the more intriguing angle is the Steelers’ history in Cleveland on Thursdays. It is the kind of track record that borders on absurd, and it gives the Browns a real case for confidence.
Three numbers stand out for Cleveland before kickoff.
The first is a strange one: during Mike Tomlin’s 20-year run in Pittsburgh, the Steelers never won a Thursday Night Football game in Cleveland. That’s despite Tomlin finishing with a 28-9-1 record against the Browns overall. On Thursday nights in Cleveland, though, Pittsburgh went 0-4, with Browns quarterbacks Jameis Winston in 2024, Jacoby Brissett in 2022, Baker Mayfield in 2019, and Brady Quinn in 2009.
Then there’s the bigger curse-like stat. The Steelers are 0-9 all time in road divisional games played on Thursday night.
That streak goes all the way back to a 1980 special broadcast on ABC against the Oilers in the Houston Astrodome. And Pittsburgh’s latest trip inside that weird little historical trap only made the stat feel more believable.
In Week 7 of 2025, the Steelers went to Cincinnati, where Joe Burrow was on injured reserve and the Bengals had just traded for Joe Flacco. Pittsburgh jumped ahead 10-0, only to watch Flacco throw for 342 yards and three touchdowns and Ja’Marr Chase pile up 16 catches for 161 yards in a 33-31 Bengals win.
The final number is more recent, and it leans Cleveland’s way again: the Steelers haven’t won in Cleveland since the 2021 season. The rivalry has been close enough to keep both sides interested, with the teams meeting three times in 2021, including the AFC wild-card round, and splitting their last 12 matchups 6-6 since that season.
But at Huntington Bank Field, the Browns have had the upper hand, going 6-1 against Pittsburgh over the past five years. The Steelers have still owned the regular season in the series overall, winning 22 straight regular-season games against Cleveland dating back to 2003, with the Browns’ only win at Pittsburgh in more than two decades coming in the 2021 playoffs.
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Browns Passing Game Just Caught A Break Before Steelers Week 4
The Browns passing game got a late-week boost before a division-size matchup with Pittsburgh, and it comes from an opponents roster shuffle rather than anything Cleveland did on its own. Joey Porter Jr. was already ruled out of the upcoming game because of a back injury, but the Steelers then sent the cornerback to Dallas in a deal for a second-round pick and a conditional sixth-rounder, removing one of their more familiar cover men from the AFC North picture altogether.
For Cleveland, the timing matters because Porter would have been a name the Browns would have had to account for twice a year if he had stayed put. Instead, Pittsburghs secondary depth now looks thinner, with Jamel Dean and Asante Samuel Jr. as the primary corners, and that changes the challenge for a Browns passing attack trying to find any edge it can get in Week 4. [Read more 🡒]
Quinshon Judkins Has A Browns Problem Bigger Than The Blocking
Quinshon Judkins has run into a problem in Cleveland that goes beyond what the offensive line is giving him. Through three games, the Browns back is averaging just 3.0 yards per carry with no touchdowns, a steep drop from the efficiency he showed as a rookie. Even with fewer stacked boxes in front of him, his runs have been among the leagues least effective, with Next Gen Stats putting him sixth from the bottom among NFL backs.
The Browns run-block win rate has not helped, but the film and the numbers point to a back who has been too tentative and has left too much yardage on the field. Now comes a tough test against Pittsburgh, one of the leagues top-graded run defenses, which makes this as much about Judkins finding decisiveness as it is about Cleveland creating better lanes. If the ground game is going to become a real threat, the Browns need more than cleaner blocking - they need Judkins to turn the openings he does get into something more. [Read more 🡒]
Steelers Face A Bigger Thursday Test Than Their Record Suggests
A short week has a way of stripping away the polish, and that is exactly what the Browns are walking into as they head into a Thursday matchup in Pittsburgh. Both teams are 2-1, which gives this meeting a little more weight than a typical early-season divisional game, especially with Cleveland trying to show it can travel well and handle a Steelers team that has been steadier than its record might suggest.
The numbers point to a tight game, with quarterback play and the ground attack both likely to matter in a big way. Jaylen Warren has been part of Pittsburghs offensive conversation, while Cleveland has gotten attention from Harold Fannin Jr. as the Browns continue to sort out what kind of weekly identity they want on offense, and the betting markets have even framed Cleveland as an underdog worth a look. [Read more 🡒]