INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY

Sheila, Trevor, and Mark sit on the couch.  It's 10 minutes until game time, Steelers at Browns.  Trevor munches on some pretzel, Mark is furiously texting someone, and Sheila sips from a bottle of Jaegermeister with a sour look on her face.

Mark (reading his phone):  Ha!  What rhymes with sheep?

Trevor:  Deep.  Sleep.  Heap.  Creep.  Beep.

Sheila:  How the hell can you not think of a rhyme for sheep?

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The Cleveland Browns return home on Sunday to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers.

It will be the first of two meetings over the season’s final six games between the longtime rivals, and the outcomes will have a major impact on the race for the final playoff spot in the AFC.

Even though the Browns lost in disappointing fashion last week in Cincinnati, because of some fortuitous losses by other teams, both the Browns and the Steelers still find themselves in the playoff hunt despite sporting 4-6 records.

The winner of this weekend’s game gets to continue on in the playoff race for at least another week, while the loser faces an increasingly difficult task on what is already an arduous journey.

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Depending on one's perspective, the Cleveland Browns either never or always disappoint. For those watching long enough to know which way that particular wind blows, nothing much about the Browns 41-20 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals was particularly surprising or disappointing.

For reasons almost completely untethered from the reality of the environment, the Browns had briefly entered the national conversation about potential playoff teams. Ensconced in a division that suddenly has gone weaker than the Big 10, the Browns and found themselves near the division lead relatively late in the season while still sporting a losing record, as if.

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Fifteen minutes. All it took was 15 minutes on Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium for the Cleveland Browns to throw away the team’s biggest opportunity in six years.

And even by the Browns standards it was pretty absurd.

The Browns took a 13-0 lead in the first quarter thanks to the defense – highlighted by Joe Haden’s interception return for a touchdown – as the Cleveland made Cincinnati starting quarterback Andy Dalton look like the average (at best) quarterback that he is.

But the Browns squandered two opportunities when they could not convert a first-and-goal at the Cincinnati two-yard line into a touchdown and then, on their next possession, could not turn a first-and-10 at the Bengals 14-yard line into touchdowns. Instead, the Browns settled for field goals, which anyone watching the Browns for long enough knew was going to be a problem down the line.

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