The Cleveland Browns news out of Thursday night is simple and a little hard to believe: Deshaun Watson directed a game-winning drive for the third straight game, Cleveland beat Pittsburgh 27-24, and the Browns sit at 3-1 and alone atop the AFC North.
Three weeks in a row. That is the part that stops you. One late drive is a highlight. Two is a nice run of luck and good protection. Three straight games decided by a quarterback walking his offense down the field in the fourth quarter is a habit, and habits are what separate a team that is 3-1 from a team that merely looks like one. Nobody in Cleveland has had the luxury of trusting the last five minutes in a long time, and now the building is being asked to get used to it.
For Pittsburgh, the loss adds to something genuinely strange. The Steelers have not won in Cleveland in five years, which is the kind of streak that stops being a coincidence and starts being a thing visiting players get asked about on Wednesday. Checked the almanac: these two have been playing each other since 1950, when Cleveland came into the NFL from the AAFC. In a rivalry with that much mileage on it, a half-decade shutout on one side of the ledger is its own small piece of history.
The other thread from Thursday is the sideline. Mike McCarthy said he regretted directing a profanity at Aaron Rodgers during a heated exchange that the broadcast caught in full. Coaches and quarterbacks have been yelling at each other since the forward pass was legalized, and most of it never leaves the grass. This one did, and McCarthy owned it fast rather than letting it marinate for a week. That is usually the better play. Losing teams at 1-3 or thereabouts have a way of turning one hot moment into a storyline, and the quickest way to kill a storyline is to say yes, that was me, my fault.
What I am watching next: whether Watson's fourth-quarter run holds up against a defense that gets to sit on film of all three drives, and how Pittsburgh's locker room sounds when the cameras come back.