The Browns’ Rocky Roads to the Playoffs

In December 2012 I had to fly to Cooperstown, New York for work. That day, Brandon Weeden (!) and the Cleveland Browns beat the Oakland (!) Raiders 20-17 to move to 4-8. They appeared in the “In the Hunt” section of the NFL.com playoff page and I was delighted. Upon arriving at the hotel, I spent a good hour on scenarios and permutations that would get an 8-8 Browns team into the playoffs. The team needed roughly 22 contests to go their way for this to happen. It was time poorly spent. Browns went 1-3 down the stretch to miss the playoffs again. Here’s hoping this is a much happier exercise.

*Note: This is a safe space so outside of this sentence I won’t be using the words “Covid,” “virus,” “vaccine,” “testing, “positive,” “policy,” “protocol,” or “confirmed.”*

The Browns (7-6) are one game out of first place in the AFC North and in the thick of the wild card race. The smart folks at Five Thirty Eight give the Browns a 40% chance to make the playoffs and a 25% chance to win the division. I think they’re underselling it. Cleveland ranged from befuddling to infuriating partly due to injuries, wildly inconsistent play, and sky-high preseason expectations. Still, despite all the hand-wringing, the Browns have more than a puncher’s chance to crash the postseason party. There are multiple paths to the promised land, but let’s start with the wild card race.

The AFC standings are rather crowded around the final wild-card spot. Five teams share a 7-6 record – the Chargers, Colts, Bills, Browns, Bengals, and Broncos. The Browns have both negative and positive tiebreakers against these clubs which will inform scoreboard watching. For the purposes of this examination let’s suspend disbelief and assume Cleveland will win out and finish 11-6.

• The Chargers (8-5) occupy the top wild-card spot but own the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Browns which means they are effectively two games ahead of them in sthe standings. The Bolts will face a stern test against the Chiefs on Thursday night, but with a final sprint of Houston, Denver, and Las Vegas it seems likely that they’ll be favored in each of their last three games. Let’s not worry about them.
• The Colts own the applicable tiebreaker against the Browns (record vs. the AFC; IND 6-3, CLE 4-5) but face a wicked back-to-back against the Patriots (9-4) Saturday night and then at the Arizona Cardinals (10-2) on Christmas Day. If the Colts lose even one of those games, then the Browns can jump them in the standings.
• Buffalo sits directly above Cleveland though both have 7-6 records. They won’t play head-to-head, and the Bills currently lead the intra-conference tiebreaker 5-5 to 4-5. Cleveland has a game in hand in that respect, but the subsequent tiebreaker is the best win-loss record among common opponents. The Bills lead in that category since they went 2-2 against PIT, HOU, KC, and NE while Cleveland went 1-3 against those foes. Note: NFL tiebreaking procedure is extraordinarily complicated. The 11th official tiebreaker is literally “Coin toss.” Either way, Buffalo has lost three of their last four and still needs to travel to Foxborough to play the Patriots. If the Pats can best the Bills then Cleveland can jump over their Lake Erie neighbors. The Browns sit in the eighth position, just barely on the wrong side of the line.
• The Bengals also have a 7-6 record, but Cleveland has the head-to-head win over them for the tiebreaker and will get to clash with Cincinnati again at home on January 9.
• Rounding things out you’ll find the 7-6 Denver Broncos who sit behind the Browns thanks to Cleveland’s Week 7 victory. The above paragraph is just exhausting. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just win the division?

If the Browns can win their final four games (stick with me) then they’d finish 11-6. If that happens and the remaining AFC North teams all win the rest of their games then Pittsburgh can be at best 9-7-1, Cincinnati can be at best 10-7, and Baltimore can at best be 12-5. However, because of intra-divisional play, there’s no way for all those records to coexist. Currently, the Browns have a half-game lead over Pittsburgh thanks to the Steelers tie against the Lions. Pittsburgh and Old Man Ben have lost three of their last four games and need to play first-place Tennessee and first-place Kansas City in the next two weeks before welcoming in the Browns for Monday night football then go to Baltimore for the season finale. It’s reasonable to think Pittsburgh will drop one of its next two games which bolsters Cleveland’s lead over them and provides a little buffer just in case. The Bengals next travel to Denver for a high-altitude clash with the surging Broncos before returning home to battle Baltimore then Kansas City. They’ll close against the Browns in Northeast Ohio. I think it’s reasonable to think Ohio’s two pro football teams could be flexed into prime time as the winner takes the AFC North.

But that’s not all! Baltimore has lost more starters to the injury list than any other team in the division and it remains to be seen if Lamar Jackson will miss any time with an ankle injury. All they must do is play the Green Bay Packers, Cincinnati Bengals, Los Angeles Rams, and Pittsburgh Steelers to close out their season. I could see them dropping one of those games or even two. Suppose the Ravens only trip up against the Rams and finish 11-6 as well. Since they split the head-to-head matchup with Cleveland the first applicable tiebreaker would be divisional record and in our scenario, the Browns would be 4-2, the Ravens would be 3-3, and Cleveland would host a home playoff game. *At this point the author began hyperventilating and had to momentarily lay down*

Now, to make things even more complicated, let’s assume the Browns lose to the Packers on Christmas Day and go 3-1 down the stretch. If Pittsburgh loses one of their final games (perhaps against the Browns) then they’ll still have the edge on them. So long as Cleveland beats Cincinnati then the Browns will maintain their head-to-head advantage. The key then becomes Baltimore. Cleveland would need the Ravens to drop two contests down the stretch which is still possible but perhaps less likely. Even in that scenario the Browns are still breathing going into Week 18.

Ultimately my takeaway is simple: The Browns are in the conversation. For the first time since 2001 and 2002, the club will win at least seven games in consecutive seasons. You know the last time they won eight games or more in back-to-back seasons? 1988 and 1989. Despite all the inconsistency, blown leads, frustrating play calling, egg lays on national TV, I’ll still take this over 1-31 and searching for mock drafts before Halloween. Regardless of the current (checks above list of forbidden words) “medical uncertainties” the Browns just might have enough depth and talent to beat an imperfect Raiders team. Maybe some of their ill folks will return in time, but if not then kickoff is still set for 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday afternoon. Nothing less than their postseason odds hang in the balance.