The Browns' last win in Pittsburgh in the regular season came on a Sunday night, Oct. 5, 2003. Tim Couch went 20 of 25 with two touchdown passes and a touchdown run, Daylon McCutcheon returned an interception 75 yards and Cleveland won 33-13.
They have lost 22 straight regular-season games there since. Todd Monken gave that history three words this week, and his team gets to take a swing at it Sunday. The list is worth reading first, if you can stand it.
Oct. 5 keeps showing up
This rivalry has a strange sense of the calendar. Cleveland's first win at Three Rivers Stadium, after 17 tries, came on Oct. 5, 1986, and the score was 27-24. That started four straight Browns wins in Pittsburgh, capped by a 51-0 opener in 1989.
So the franchise has broken a drought in that city before. Couch's night has now stood as the last entry for 23 years.
Twenty-two ways to lose in one building
The 2018 ESPN rundown by Pat McManamon is the best tour of the wreckage, and the near misses are the ones that sting.
In 2007, Josh Cribbs ran a kickoff back 100 yards for a 28-24 lead, Pittsburgh answered with 3:13 left and Phil Dawson's 52-yard tying try failed with 10 seconds to go. In 2014, Cleveland trailed 27-3 at halftime and lost by three. In 2016, the Browns took an overtime lead on a field goal, then watched Landry Jones throw the winner.
The 2017 finale may be the cruelest. Corey Coleman dropped a fourth-down pass in a 28-24 loss that closed out 0-16.
Others were just grim. In 2008 Bruce Gradkowski, signed that same week, went 5-for-16 for 18 yards in a 31-0 loss. In 2011 James Harrison's hit on Colt McCoy in a 14-3 game led the NFL to put a neutral observer in the press box. Romeo Crennel, Pat Shurmur and Rob Chudzinski all coached their last Browns game in that stadium.
Add up all 22 and the average score is about 27.5 to 14.5. Only six were decided by eight points or fewer.
The playoff night that didn't count
The streak has one asterisk, and it's a beauty. On Oct. 18, 2020, Pittsburgh beat Cleveland 38-7. Eighty-four days later, in the same stadium, the Browns won a wild-card game 48-37, without Kevin Stefanski, after scoring 28 in the first quarter. That snapped a 17-game losing streak in Pittsburgh.
It did not change the regular-season count. Five more losses followed: 26-14, 28-14, 26-22, 27-14 and 23-9.
Five straight at home, five straight losses away
Over that same stretch, the rivalry flipped in Cleveland. The Browns have won their last five home games against Pittsburgh, by 29-17, 13-10, 24-19, 13-6 and 27-24 on Oct. 1. The same franchise has lost five straight on the road in this series, and sits 21-52 at Pittsburgh all time in the regular season.
This group has already beaten Pittsburgh once this year, and it did that despite 14 flags. Nothing about those 22 losses binds this roster to a 23rd.
Cleveland hasn't swept Pittsburgh since 1988. Sunday could end that wait and finally give Oct. 5, 2003, a replacement.
Image: AI-generated image.
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