Written by Thomas Moore

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Fresh off their first win of the NFL season, the Cleveland Browns head west on Sunday to take on the Indianapolis Colts.

Can the Browns win consecutive games for the first time since beating the Colts and Dolphins in Week 2 and Week 3 last season? Can they win their first road game in 10 tries? Can they give owner Jimmy Haslam his first win as an NFL owner?

Let’s see if we can find out.

The Opposition

Indianapolis’ record: 2-3
Offensive rank: 13th overall/9th passing/26th rushing
Defensive rank: 17th overall/3rd passing/29th rushing
All-time record: Browns lead, 16-14
Last meeting: Browns won, 27-19, in Week 2 of last season
The line: Browns (+2.5)

What to Watch For

The Browns may have to get out of the comfort zone on Sunday, but there are two matchups that they simply must exploit if they want to give themselves the best chance to win the game.

The first is feeding the ball to running back Trent Richardson. You think the Browns are bad against the run? Wait until you get a load of the Colts.

On the season, the Colts are giving up 159 rushing yards per game and an average of 5.0 yards per carry. The numbers have been worse the past three games, as they have allowed 508 yards, an average of 5.9 yards per rush, and five touchdowns.

Richardson has rushed for 340 yards and four touchdowns this year, despite the Browns bringing him along slowly following knee surgery and Richardson missing a large portion of last week’s game against the Bengals with a rib injury.

“I’m still going to play physical and play hard-nosed football, smash-mouth football,” Richardson said. “That’s what I was brought up to do and that’s how I know how to play football. In my mind, I definitely want to be out there. I want to be out there with my team and I want to be out there fighting and playing every down with them. In my head, most definitely, I’m playing.

“They have a good defense and the (New York) Jets had a lot of success. We’ve got to make sure we do not do the exact same thing as them, but we have to do something much better than what the Jets did to win this game. For us, we have to make sure we get a lot of penetration when we run through each gap we can get. We have to get what they give us.”

Hopefully the Browns will not outsmart themselves with this week’s game plan, although coach Pat Shurmur has us wondering.

“You factor that in when you play an opponent, what they’re good at,” Shurmur said. “I think teams across the board can stop the run on an individual, one-game basis extremely well. Then, there are teams that if they’re going to play you to throw the football, then, they’ll try to defend you. Those statistics from week-to-week, you don’t put too much into. When you play a team, it’s a one-game basis. We’ve got to go in there and try to do what we think is best, running and throwing, and try to out-execute the opponent.”

Uh, OK.

Richardson, who is listed as questionable on the injury report, will wear a flak jacket this week to protect his ribs. Further complicating matters is the team will be without starting left guard Jason Pinkston, who will miss the game (and probably several more) after being hospitalized with a blood clot in his lung.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Browns obviously have to deal with rookie quarterback Andrew Luck, but wide receiver Reggie Wayne is the one player they really need to contain.

The Colts can’t run the ball, Donald Brown leads the team in rushing with 239 yards and no one has a run over 20 yards, and Wayne is pretty much the team’s only option in the passing game.

The 12-year veteran has 41 receptions for 593 yards (by comparison Josh Gordon leads the Browns with 274 yards) and a staggering 30 of his receptions have resulted in first downs. The Colts are targeting Wayne a league-leading 13 times a game, so there really isn’t any other viable option to the Colts passing game (although with the Browns you can never discount the opposing tight end), so this match up is key.

The problem for the Browns is that Wayne lines up quite frequently as a slot receiver (62.9 percent of his snaps, according to Pro Football Focus) and has totaled 371 receiving yards, third most in the NFL, from the slot.

The solution should be simple: have corner back Joe Haden cover Wayne exclusively. The problem is, corner back Buster Skrine normally covers the slot receiver and Skrine has given up 13 catches for 119 yards in the past two games.

So the Browns are going to have Haden cover Wayne exclusively, right?

“You can double (Wayne) obviously, that’s one way to defend him, but then you’re singled up everywhere else,” defensive coordinator Dick Jauron said. “You can man him up. All the normal things you would suspect, you try to change up. You zone some you man him up, pressure some. (You) try to affect the timing of the route in a number of different ways. Clearly, nobody has stopped him in his career. He has had a tremendous career. He is a terrific receiver. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s got powerful hands. He catches the ball cleanly and he understands how to run routes. We just have to challenge him and do the best we can against him try to change up. (He has been) a very productive guy throughout his whole career.”

OK, but Haden is going to cover Wayne exclusively, right?

“There’s always a chance of anything,” Jauron said.

Not sure we are feeling very good about this.

Elsewhere, much of the talk during the game will probably be focused on Luck and fellow rookie quarterback Brandon Weeden.

The two have very similar numbers – Luck is completing 53.4 percent of his passes and has thrown for 1,488 yards, seven touchdowns and seven interceptions; while Weeden has completed 55.8 percent of his passes, for 1,519 yards, seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions.

The last time Weeden and Luck faced each other, they combined for 747 passing yards and 1,001 yards of total offense in Oklahoma State’s defeat of Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl last January. We’re pretty sure we won’t be seeing a repeat of that on Sunday in Lucas Oil Stadium.

“It’s more important who can put their team in position to win the game,” Weeden said. “If he goes out there and throws for 300, I don’t want to throw for 301. That’s not what we’re worried about. It’s all about, at the end of the game, getting that W or L. That’s my mind frame. I think that’s the most important thing for me.”

Fact of the Week That Must Be Pointed Out

Browns center Alex Mack, who on Sunday will make his 55th consecutive start since entering the league, once played a game with appendicitis, had his appendix removed during the week and played in the next game.

Steelers’ center Maurkice Pouncey had missed playoff games with various injuries and will most likely miss Sunday’s game with a boo-boo on his knee.

Is there really any question who is the toughest center in the AFC North?

Interesting Footnote on Rookie Quarterbacks and the Browns

Sunday’s game will be the fourth time in team history that two rookie quarterbacks will face each other in the same game.

The Browns are 2-1 in these matchups, with Don Gault (of course) beating Pittsburgh and Terry Bradshaw in 1970, and Brian Sipe beating Tom Own and San Francisco in 1974. The final score of the Pittsburgh game was 15-7, while the Browns won the game against the 49ers by the score of 7-0.

Something tells us this week’s game will see a few more points scored.

The Prediction

The Browns have been showing improvement this season, even if it has been slow and hard to see at times. A win on Sunday to give them back-to-back victories would go a long way toward rewarding the team for hanging in there.

There haven’t been any games so far this season where fans could say that, if the Browns just take care of business, they should be able to walk out of the game with a win. This week is one of those times.

The Browns have clear advantages where the Colts are weakest, now it’s up to the Browns to figure out a way to exploit those matchups.

“My job is to make sure we keep our eye on the ball as we prepare for the Colts,” Shurmur said. “I told the players that winning is a by-product of the preparation and of course, then getting it done on Sunday.”

This week, the Browns will get it done on Sunday.

Welcome to the NFL, Jimmy Haslam. Enjoy your first win, because you never know when the next one will come.

Record picking the Browns this year: 1-4-1

(Photo courtesy of ClevelandBrowns.com)