Did that really happen?

B efore we go any further, before we discuss what happened, I have to ask, right off the top, just to be sure: Are we absolutely positive that it did happen? Browns 48, Steelers 37? In a playoff game? In Pittsburgh? And the Browns were the team missing their head coach? We’re sure that that happened? What with deep fakes and echo chambers and all sorts of seedy subspheres of internet influence, it’s hard to take anything you find on a screen at face value. 

So I ask you, rubbing my eyes once again, this time in the light of day, and please, don’t mess with me here: Did we really see what we saw?

“There are questions on one side,” said a commentator at halftime, “And answers on the other.” A theme familiar to any Browns-Steelers game, that. Only this time, the sides were switched. Caesar was the one stabbing Brutus. It was Juliet calling up to Romeo on the balcony. The Roadrunner, not Wile E. Coyote, tumbling into the Grand Canyon, triggering a banner day for Acme stock.

The whole thing felt like a role reversal. From the very first snap of the game, the Browns were up. Then they were up more, and more, and more still. It got tight in the second half — I went minuteslong stretches without taking a full breath — but after falling into a 28-0 hole early, the Steelers could cut the lead to no less than two scores. When Nick Chubb took that screen pass to the house to put the Browns up 42-23 in the fourth quarter, the math became too much to overcome. Each second that ticked off the clock made the result seem more real.

Even the final score makes it seem closer than it was. As tense as things felt when the Steelers were driving, the Browns led comfortably on the scoreboard throughout. They maintained a double-digit lead for 55 minutes of game time. Fifty-five! They didn’t allow a sack, the first time the Steelers were shut out in that category in three years. Baker Mayfield tossed three touchdowns and didn’t turn the ball over. The Browns’ go-to playmakers showed up when it mattered, as Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt and Jarvis Landry combined for 298 total yards and four touchdowns.

There are stats and data that tell some of the tale, but more questions than answers come to mind as I seek rational explanation. Was it just one of those games? Could the Browns have actually benefited from not being able to practice more? Is the whole idea of practice overrated? Was Allen Iverson onto something? Has Kevin Stefanski built a ship so steady that it can cruise without him at the helm? Will Alex Van Pelt be the league’s next darling offensive assistant? Is Ben Roethlisberger just done?

The Browns had the coaching advantage even without Stefanski present.

I, for one, see limited sense in even trying to explain it all right now. In time we’ll look at the tape and break down the numbers and figure out who did what. For now, this being Victory Monday and all — Playoff Victory Monday, at that — let us bask. Let us take a deep breath. Let us inhale the energy of the Browns putting up 48 points in Pittsburgh, and let us exhale, well, most everything else that’s happened in Pittsburgh since the first Bush administration. Let us also understand that there were a great many things at play on that field Sunday night. Many of them, it seemed to me, were beyond our comprehension, in which case, score one for the agnostics.

Yet there were undoubtedly believers. In various communications Sunday night, I had friends theorizing that it was the spirit of a recently passed parent that had infused the team and brought this grand result. Perhaps it was the good fortune that accompanies a newborn child. Maybe Cleveland fans’ legendarily indefatigable spirit had finally paid off. Maybe all that talk about us deserving a winner was valid. Or maybe ordering the big dawg bone–shaped pizza was the move that provided the right, ahem (stands up) (stands back) (clears throat), juju.

I’ll be straight with you, dear reader. I had no confidence that the Browns would win this game. I saw no reasonable reason to have confidence. The defense, which allowed just five points fewer than the four-win Bengals in the regular season, would be without two of its best corners, including Denzel Ward, the one true blue-chipper not named Myles Garrett. Garrett himself would play, but he still seems to be operating at less than full capacity post-COVID. Ben Roethlisberger’s bona fides, against the Browns, at home and in general, needn’t be rehashed. Same goes for a generation’s worth of bad vibes.

As for the other side of the ball: Kevin Stefanski and Bill Callahan, the architects of the offense, would even not be in the stadium. Of the offensive line, Cris Collinsworth said that makeshift was an understatement, and, I mean, hand up if you’d heard of Blake Hance before Sunday night. (Baker Mayfield shared in his postgame interview that he literally met his soon-to-be left guard for the first time in the locker room.) Even the team’s travel plans were affected, with the coaches driving so as to isolate themselves and give the players on the plane more room to spread out.

Yet the Browns had the coaching advantage even without Stefanski present, which feels truly surreal. What doomed the Steelers more than anything else was their conservative decision-making. Losing 28-0 early in the second quarter, they punted from the Browns 38-yard line, an unthinkably wimpy move. It was 4th-and-8, sure, and there was a lot of game left at the time, but punts in enemy territory are the province of the timid, in today’s game more than ever. The kick went out of bounds at the 10. Trailing by four touchdowns, the Steelers traded a chance to score for 28 yards of field position.

Perhaps more indefensible was Mike Tomlin’s decision not to go for it on 4th-and-1 from the Pittsburgh 46-yard line to open the fourth quarter, when the Steelers were down just 12. Had they finished that drive with points, sweaty palms time would have begun in earnest. Instead, they called up a heavily choreographed non-play designed to draw the Browns offsides, starting in punt formation before line dancing into other arrangements. When Cleveland didn’t take the bait, Pittsburgh ate a delay of game penalty and booted it away.

The Browns’ next possession ended with that 40-yard touchdown by Chubb. The hay was all but in the barn.

All week — indeed, all season — Stefanski and the Browns have talked that boring, accountable, do-your-job talk. It’s the same crap that every football coach says but only few can say convincingly. It all seems like vapid blather when you lose and scripture when you win. “You’ve been ready for curveballs all season,” he told his team, per Peter King, “This is just another one.” Tune out the noise. Control what you can. Next man up. (King’s column is worth reading for tales of the Browns’ COVID-riddled week in general and how the team came to sign backup O-lineman Blake Hance in particular.)

The next men up rose high on Sunday. How about backup defensive end Porter Gustin laying out like Dennis Rodman to grab an interception? One time for cornerback M.J. Stewart, who came up with his second pick in as many weeks, and Sheldrick Redwine and Sione Takitaki, who made massive INTs of their own. And let’s hear it for both Michael Dunn, who started in place of Joel Bitonio at left guard, and Blake Hance, who stepped in when Dunn got hurt, both of whom played so well that I didn’t so much as notice Cameron Heyward all night long.

As long as we’re doling out kudos, raise a glass — whether it’s coffee or something stronger; we aren’t here to judge — to the entire offensive line. Missing their position coaches, down one Pro Bowler in Joel Bitonio and then a second when Jack Conklin’s hamstring betrayed him, those dudes put Yinzers in the dirt all night long. J.C. Tretter again got the job done as player-coach. Wyatt Teller’s pulling brutality was rightly featured in highlight cutups. Jedrick Wills performed as well as you could hope for a rookie. Kendall Lamm largely kept T.J. Watt in check. The unit that got its ass kicked in Week 6 controlled the line of scrimmage. This time they were bigger. Stronger. Faster. They had more facial hair.

The next men up rose high on Sunday.

This was always the blueprint for these Browns. Take the lead. Play from ahead. Control the clock. Run the ball. The Steelers knew it, too, and so they crammed the box with as many black helmets as they could find. Knowing that Chubb and Hunt were the Browns’ best way forward, the Steelers wanted the Browns to keep the ball in the quarterback’s hands. They begged Baker to beat them.

And then a funny thing happened: He did. No trick plays needed this time around. His mettle stood up to the playoff crucible. He got his guys lined up, worked from the pocket, and found throwing lanes. He resisted the urge to extend every play with a roll to the right. He didn’t play hero ball. He just played quarterback. A couple balls sailed on him and a couple got batted down, but those were exceptions. Incompletions and drops were aw-shucks missteps, not soul-crushing gaffes. 

So I ask you again: Did that really happen out there Sunday night? Were the Browns really the more prepared team? Were they the ones capitalizing on mistakes, transforming turnovers into touchdowns? Was it the Pittsburgh receivers who were slipping out of their breaks? Are the Steelers now the ones forced to answer uncomfortable questions, possibly including — gasp! — what they’ll do at quarterback next year? The answer to all of those questions appears to be yes.

Now, however — and this is the really weird part — is not the time to gloat in Allegheny County’s general direction. We’ll have the whole offseason to do that. (Y’know, mock drafts just aren’t as interesting when you’re picking in the twenties.) Soon our attention shall turn to Kansas City, but now isn’t the time for that, either. Not yet, not quite. Now is the time to savor this victory which we’ve sought for so long. Now is the time to heap praise, love and appreciation onto the players, coaches and staff who made it possible. Now is the time to delight in what this team is, how far it has come, and what it might yet be. 

On that last point, Myles Garrett was asked in the postgame Zoom what this result says about who the Browns are. This victory, the subtext hinted, is not what the Cleveland Browns have been about. This is not the Brownsiness we’ve come to know and endure. This was not heartbreak, but dominance. How are we to make sense of this? Asked a reporter pointedly: Who are the Cleveland Browns?

Myles paused. He considered the question. What crossed his mind at that moment? Was it his rookie season, the infamous 0-16 campaign? Did he think of how far he and the team had come since then, and even since last year? This being the Steelers, was revenge on his mind? Perhaps, ever the poet, a verse popped into his head. If any of the above happened, he offered no indication. Instead, he took a familiar refrain, one known among football fans far and wide, one that had been used as a dig against the team as recently as last week, and flipped it on its head. His answer was as poetic as this game was unthinkable.

“We’re the Cleveland Browns,” said Myles, a smile crossing his face. “Same old Cleveland Browns.”