When is a winning streak something that fans can believe in, rather than just a mirage that helps to mask a team’s ongoing problems?

Just as importantly, how can you tell the difference?

That’s the question facing everyone surrounding the Cleveland Browns, from the front office to the locker room all the way down to the fans.

It’s not a surprise, really, that Browns fans are struggling to decide what the current team’s three-game winning streak really means – after all, we don’t see a lot of winning here in Cleveland.

Is this a sign that the Browns, 5-3 over their past eight games, have finally turned the corner after starting the year at 0-5? How about if they win out to go 8-3 over the season’s final 11 games? While probably unrealistic for this team, it is still hypothetically on the table.

Should those 11 games count more than the 21 games – when the Browns were 4-17 – that preceded them?

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The game of chess is an activity that I have come to enjoy, even with a very limited amount of success.  I’m talking about a level of limited success that compares to the Expansion Era Cleveland Browns, trying different approaches with the same undesired results.  Occasionally, I might make a big move, one that brings a smile to my face, but it’s often too little, too late.  The weakest pieces on the board, the pawns, are nothing more than a nuisance, as I cannot effectively use them in a strategic way and they prevent me from any beneficial utilization of my bishops and rooks.

In other words, I stink at chess.  My queen may be known to reak havoc near the end of the game, but she basically ends up being the piece that dies right before my opponent says, “check mate”.  Whatever I do, I don’t go on the offensive quick enough, and most of my game involves moving my king out of check.  It ceases to be fun because I find myself playing not to lose; in the end, my king is nothing more than a pawn.

There is a metaphorical connection between a bad chess player and a dysfunctional professional sports franchise, but I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions on that plane.  From my experiences, the only thing worse than losing is the absence of hope that winning will ever be on the horizon.  From all of our experiences as Browns fans since 1999, save some smoke and mirrors from Butch Davis or Derek Anderson, what have we had to believe in?  Wasn’t Sunday just the day that we watched our opponents obliterate our pawns for a few hours before capturing our king?

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There is any number of ways to approach the Cleveland Browns' 3-game win streak, but familiarity isn't one of them. The Browns haven't seen a winning streak since former head coach Eric Mangini made his mad-dash sprint at the end of his first season. Even then, there's wasn't a whole lot to enjoy about it. Mangini was hanging by a thread for a number of reasons, including the recent hiring of Mike Holmgren, and the Browns were so far from relevant that all a 4-game win streak then was to give them 5 wins overall. And it wasn't as if anything carried over from that streak into the following season. The Browns started out 0-3 on their way to another 5-win season.

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Useless nuggets of information from Sunday’s Browns game that you can certainly live without…

RARE BLOWOUT: This was the Browns’ largest margin of victory since clobbering Arizona 44-6 in 2003. It was only the fourth time since their return they won a game by more than 20 points.

GOING AGAINST THE OLD BOSS: The Browns’ all-time record against former Cleveland head coaches now stands at 16-16-1. Ironically, the only former coach against whom they have a winning record is Paul Brown (7-3). They split with Forrest Gregg (4-4) and have posted losing marks against Marty Schottenheimer (2-5-1) and Bill Belichick (2-4).

WHAT ARE THE ODDS, PART 1: The last time the Browns went on a three-game winning streak, they defeated the same three teams, albeit in different order. In December of 2009, the Browns knocked off first the Steelers, then the Chiefs, then the Raiders. They closed out the season with a fourth straight win over Jacksonville.

RETURN HISTORY: Travis Benjamin’s 93-yard touchdown was the longest punt return in Browns’ history, topping Eric Metcalf’s 92-yard runback for a score against the Bengals in 1994. The last Brown other than Josh Cribbs to return a punt for a touchdown was Dennis Northcutt in 2005.

FOURTH THREE: This is only the fourth time in the 14 seasons since their rebirth that the Browns have won three straight games.

BIG ONE EARLY: Jamaal Charles’ 80-yard touchdown on the first play turned out to represent 26% of Kansas City’s offense for the game. From that point on, the Chiefs averaged 4.5 yards per play.

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