Browns-Steelers rivalry a thing of the past

By Chris Easterling
IndeOnline.com staff writer

The You Tube image is somewhat grainy. The player wearing a brown jersey and the orange helmet catches the punt around his own 25. After a brief sprint straight ahead, he moves to the outside, past the helpless grasps of faceless defenders in black and gold, before getting back on an unimpeded path toward the end zone.

The sound, though, comes in crystal clear.

It starts as a muffled shout from the crowd at the catch. It picks up intensity about the time the move’s made to the outside and by the time he crosses the goal line, it’s a deafening cacophony.

Even 18 years after Eric Metcalf’s 75-yard punt return for a touchdown — his second of the day — helped the Browns beat the Steelers in a 1993 game, it’s hard not the feel the impact of the moment through the replay.

It’s not just a crowd reacting to one player’s big play. It’s a crowd in full-throated ecstasy over what it meant, which was a win over a hated foe in what was once as nasty and heated a rivalry as there was in the NFL.

That rivalry, sadly, exists only in those grainy You Tube clips. There is no Browns-Steelers rivalry any more, at least not as those old enough to drive a car may remember it.

The rivalry went on hiatus when Art Modell moved the Browns — the real Browns — to Baltimore in 1995. It’s been on life support for much of the time since the Football Team Now Known As The Browns came into the league in 1999.

And the patient — the rivalry — may just have flat-lined.

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