The new Browns did the old Browns a big favor.
When Week 17 of the 2025 NFL regular season began, the Steelers had two separate paths to winning the AFC North Division and earning the home playoff game during Wildcard Weekend that comes with that. Get some help from the Packers on Saturday, or take care of business themselves on Sunday.
On Saturday, the Packers lost to the Ravens in Lambeau Field, which kept alive Baltimore’s playoff hopes, the franchise that was the old Browns before Art Modell moved the team in 1996. And then on Sunday, the new Browns, who filled the NFL void in Cleveland starting in 1999, finished the job by defeating the Steelers, 13-6, in Huntington Bank Field.
As a result, the Steelers and Ravens square off in Week 18 for the division championship, which one team or the other has won in 20 of the 29 seasons since the Ravens were born in 1996. Whether it was called the AFC Central or the AFC North, whether the coaches were Bill Cowher and Brian Billick or Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh, whether it was Three Rivers Stadium or Acrisure Stadium, it always seems to come down to these two teams.
But this installment is going to be a first. On Christmas Day in 2016, the Steelers clinched the division and eliminated the Ravens with a win in Pittsburgh, but that one wasn’t the regular season finale. Despite a generation of what always ends up being: two trains … one track, there never had been a winer-take-all matchup in the finale. This time it’s the NFL version of Thunderdome. Two teams enter. One team goes to the playoffs; the other goes home.
“We lost a chance to clinch it today,” said Cam Heyward in the aftermath of the loss in Cleveland. “But the competitor in me is like, bring it on. Baltimore’s coming in. Winner takes all. I have a lot of respect for those guys over there. Let’s play at home.”
That assignment will come soon enough. But when it comes to the Browns, home or on the road, what the Steelers had experienced in the last 5 installments of this series is that if Myles Garrett is allowed to wreck the game, he wrecks it. In 2023, when Garrett had 2 sacks vs. the Steelers, the Browns won; when he had 0, they lost. Same thing in 2024. When he had 3 sacks, the Browns won; when he had 1, they lost. In the first meeting of 2025, back on Oct. 12 in Pittsburgh, Garrett had 0 sacks, and the Browns lost.
Granted, there was added spice to Sunday’s game because Garrett was looking for 1 sack to break the all-time NFL single-season record in that category, but the attention paid to preventing Garrett from getting to Aaron Rodgers was primarily about beating the Browns and clinching the division title. Preventing him from breaking the record came along with that.
“We didn’t do anything against Myles that we don’t normally do against Myles,” said Tomlin. “The sack records are irrelevant. We’ve got to minimize him if we want to engineer victory. We did the same thing last time we played them. I didn’t think he had any sacks in that game either, and so we didn’t take a different approach because of the gravity of the record. It’s just standard business when you playing these guys and him.”
That part of the plan worked, because Garrett finished with no sacks and hit Rodgers just once, but executing it came at a cost. Once Darnell Washington was lost to a broken arm in the first quarter, Pat Freiermuth and Kenneth Gainwell often were deployed as “chippers,” and with DK Metcalf suspended and Calvin Austin III out with injury, the primary targets at wide receiver became Marquez Valdes-Scantling (9), Scotty Miller (7), and Adam Thielen (5). Only Miller had been with the team for more than a month.
“(The Browns) have a good defense, but, we didn’t execute very well in third downs,” said Rodgers. “I didn’t have a very good game, and we didn’t run the ball early like we wanted to. And (it was) pretty bad on third down.”
Yes it was. The Steelers were trailing, 10-0, before they had their first third-down conversion, and they had to settle for a couple of Chris Boswell field goals largely as the result of going 1-for-5 on third downs and 0-for-1 on fourth down in the second quarter.
Through all of this, there were opportunities – some gifts and some the Steelers created for themselves – but they were unable to finish the job.
For example, trailing 10-3 in the second quarter, Alex Highsmith pressured and hit Shedeur Sanders, whose pass then bounced off Logan Lee’s helmet on the way to being intercepted by Jack Sawyer, who returned it to the Browns 31-yard line. After a Rodgers’ run on third-and-7 came up 1 yard short of the line to gain, his deep shot down the sideline to a single-covered Miller was overthrown on fourth-and-1. That interception produced no points.
Their other takeaway came on Kyle Dugger’s interception early in the fourth quarter at the Pittsburgh 34-yard line, but the offense went 4-and-out before Corliss Waitman was called on to punt. At that point, the Steelers were a plus-2 in turnover ratio but still with just a couple of Boswell field goals in a 10-6 game.
Heyward believed there was meat left on that bone. “And if we’re critical of our team, be critical of our defense. We had some clear opportunities to see some more turnovers as well.”
Maybe he was referring to the Browns’ first play of the possession that followed the fourth-down incompletion to Miller, when Sanders’ sideline pass to TE Blake Whiteheart would’ve been a touchdown … for the Steelers if Nick Herbig could’ve secured the catch for an interception that had pick-6 written all over it.
And that’s the way it went throughout the game.
The Steelers finished with more offensive plays, more total net yards, and a higher time of possession than the Browns, but they weren’t able to cash in for more points, because of inefficiency on possession downs and in the red zone. The defense had 2 takeaways and allowed fewer than 100 yards rushing, but there was the time two of their safeties were fooled by a Sanders’ flutterball finding its way to Harrold Fannin Jr. for a 28-yard touchdown, plus the coulda-shoulda pick-6 that wasn’t.
“I didn’t think we played poorly. We just didn’t make enough plays,” said Tomlin. “I thought the Browns played well. I thought the game was unfolding in the way that you would anticipate, but we never made the signature play that kind of got us over the hump. That generally is the deciding factor in games like this, and we generally make them. We didn’t make them today.”
After making those kinds of plays during the three-game winning streak they took to Cleveland, they did not against the Browns. Which is why it’s going to be winner-take all vs. the Ravens. And while this loss created that urgency, how the Steelers respond to it becomes what will define this season.
“It’s for everything,” said Heyward. “You don’t have to look around. You don’t have to wait for somebody else to play … And if you’re a competitor, and you understand this rivalry with Baltimore, it’s what you want.”
