Cleveland Browns focused on next game, not win streak over Bengals
BEREA − The Browns’ played arguably their best game of the season the last time they saw the Cincinnati Bengals.
It was Halloween, and the Browns, mired in a four-game losing streak, were just looking to find a way to win a game. They found it in the form of a dominant 32-13 victory over the Bengals.
Now, five weeks later, the Browns once again find themselves up against the Bengals, this time in Cincinnati. Would it be safe to say it’ll be a Bengals team out for a bit of revenge?
“I’m sure they are,” running back Nick Chubb said Wednesday.
The Browns have been the Lucy to the Bengals’ Charlie Brown over the last two-plus seasons. Cleveland has won the last five games in the series, and − extended back even further to the 2018 season − eight of the last nine.
All of which means, to Chubb, nothing as the two in-state rivals get ready to meet Sunday.
“It’s a new game,” Chubb said. “It’s a new week. We can’t go on what we did in the past. We have to look at it as today and right now. All that that happened in the past, it doesn’t do anything for us now, so come in today and get back to work.”
That does not mean the Browns don’t understand the importance of extending the streak over Cincinnati.
A win on Sunday, which would be their third in a row on the season, keeps the Browns’ hopes alive to potentially win the AFC North, as distant as those hopes may seem in the moment. They enter with a 5-7 record. The Bengals and the Baltimore Ravens lead the division at 7-4.
“Try not to look ahead, but if we win out, we’ve kind of got a good shot, but it’s just one week at a time,” safety John Johnson II said. “We want to go 1-0, like you said. They’ve been hot and you wanna play your best football in December and January. So we got two games under our belt and we’ve just got to win this one.”
The benefit for the Browns in scheduling comes in literally a seven-day time frame Between Sunday and the following Saturday, they’ll have a chance to see both Cincinnati and Baltimore.
That scheduling fortune essentially boils the season down to that one week. The Browns, though, are taking a much more micro look at things.
“I think every game’s a must game,” cornerback Denzel Ward said. “Like I said, that’s the whole mindset. Just taking it one game at a time and going out there and trying to find a way to get a win.”
Ward was one of several Browns players who didn’t play in the first game this season against the Bengals. He was sidelined recovering from a concussion, while tight end David Njoku (ankle) and linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (knee) were also out.
All three will be back this time around, providing three critical pieces needed against a Cincinnati team playing its best football of the season. The Bengals have won four in a row since the loss in Cleveland, including last Sunday’s win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
The last two seasons, the Bengals have gone 9-3 in games played after Nov. 1. That’s the kind of late-season success the Browns are trying to replicate in order to get themselves back in the division race.
“I mean, you see what they did last year, they ended up going all the way and like I said, December and January, you gotta get hot,” Johnson said. “The team that gets hot, the first 10 or whatever weeks don’t even really matter. The team that gets hot at the right time and gets their foot in the door for the tournament, anything can go. So you wanna get momentum now December, January, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The win on Sunday was Cincinnati’s third in a row over the Chiefs, including last season’s AFC Championship Game. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has beaten Kansas City every time he’s faced them in his two-plus seasons in the league.
However, Burrow has taken the loss in all four of his starts against the Browns, having not played in last year’s regular-season finale. While he’s played well statistically in most of those games − averaging 309 passing yards with a 92.6 career passer rating against Cleveland, he’s been plagued by sacks and ill-timed turnovers.
The Browns have sacked Burrow 17 times in four games, including five times back on Halloween. He’s also thrown four interceptions − including three of his five career red-zone picks − in his last three games against Cleveland.
“They got really good players and we haven’t executed up to our abilities,” Burrow told Cincinnati reporters. “We’re going to have to execute the game plan to the best of our ability and move the ball, put points on the board and keep their offense off the field.”
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