A Pleasant Result for Browns Vs. Steelers? Not Likely

A pleasant result for Browns vs. Steelers? Not likely
By Gene Collier / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/g...s/201409070214

The Steelers plan to start the 2014 season exactly the way they finished the 2013 season, by beating the Cleveland Browns at home, which they've done 10 consecutive times, and which will make Cleveland 0-for-the-past-decade on opening day.
If there's a safer bet anywhere on the modern landscape of the NFL than Cleveland losing an opener at Pittsburgh, it could only be that Johnny Manziel won't be doing Jägerbombs with Merril Hoge in the near term.
I'm not sure that a hyper-scrutinized rookie quarterback getting called a juvenile punk by a former Steeler and NFL analyst is worthy of multiple news cycles or not, as Hoge is given to inflammatory appraisals of young players. It would be different if Meryl Streep had called out Johnny Foosball. Now that would be news.
Anyway, I'm sure Merril didn't mean anything by it, just as I'm sure he wasn't trying to suggest that juvenile punks can't succeed in the NFL, evidence to the contrary being fairly voluminous.
But Manziel inadvertently walking into a Hoge flogging was all that stood out in a perfectly predictable ramp-up to a perfectly predictable opener, at least until I walked into Steelers practice Friday and saw Ike Taylor make a leaping interception.
Yes, Ike Taylor caught a football.
And then ... he caught another one.
Clearly, something is afoot. Is there some cosmic wrinkle in the natural order of all things for this, the 25th anniversary of Cleveland 51, Pittsburgh 0, not to mention the 15th anniversary of Pittsburgh 43, Cleveland 0, the twin lowlights in all of turnpike opener history? Just in case, I would assume nothing about what might happen Sunday at 1 o'clock when the Browns and Steelers measure each other across roughly two acres of blended Kentucky blue grass on the North Side. The Browns, in fact, are probably one of the harder opponents for the Steelers to prepare for, as the coaches, the quarterbacks and the various systems deployed by Cleveland have changed almost as often as Miss America.
The Steelers have prepared for four different Browns coaches in the past five years, and five different Browns quarterbacks in the past five years if you count Manziel and today's starter, Brian Hoyer, so that's gotta be difficult, right?
"No, not really," Troy Polamalu said, helpfully. "You know it's gonna be close, no matter how good one team is or how bad the other team is. Recently they've played consistently excellent defense and even when they haven't, they've played our offense really well.
"It's going to be a good game."
See? I told you something was afoot.
You could sell this 123rd meeting between the Browns and Steelers as likely a down-to-the-last-minute proposition if Cleveland were at full strength, but that stopped being the case the minute the league suspended Josh Gordon until the season opener after this season opener.
Gordon, whose 237 receiving yards Nov. 24 in Ohio were the most in one game in the history of this series, starts his new job at a car dealership this weekend after multiple violations of the NFL drug policy and multiple driving arrests over the summer.
But if the Steelers last week stopped preparing for the NFL's leading receiver, they never stopped working on the assumption that Manziel would play, even after he lost the camp quarterback battle to Hoyer.
Frankly, the Steelers should hope Manziel plays, because the alternative might be that first-year coach Mike Pettine is pleased as can be with the way Hoyer is dealing with a Steelers defense that's inexperienced in some places and probably too experienced in others.
If this opener goes deep into the fourth quarter without Manziel stepping across the visitors' sideline, conditions might even be favorable for the first Browns victory in Pittsburgh since 2003. More foreboding, perhaps, the Steelers have played 13 consecutive games in which they have not been scalded by a special teams touchdown or a touchdown on a turnover, a streak that may have reached its unlucky end.
I would look for Polamalu to provide some comfort, some structure, some historical gravitas to what has the odd feel of impending chaos.
Troy's got four interceptions in his past six appointments with the Browns, whose ever-changing quarterbacks have never really figured out how to avoid him.
"I don't know," Polamalu said, helpfully. "That's the past."
So despite its tangible uncertainties, this will be the way 2014 starts for the Steelers, with days of future past, and a 27-17 victory.