Why the Cleveland games are some of the Steelers most important

The Pittsburgh Steelers should be itching to beat the Cleveland Browns in 2021 more than they ever have before.

It is an old saying within the Steelers community, that while Pittsburgh plays to win Lombardis, Cleveland plays to beat Pittsburgh. I must say, that does appear to hold true especially now, as I have seen virtually no Browns Super Bowl hype when compared to how much I have seen pointless trash talk being thrown towards the Steel City while it minds its own business.

If this were the winless Browns being discussed, perhaps the lack of postseason discussion would be more justified. However, the snake-bitten franchise just recently pulled off one of the best draft performances in the entire league, all after being a mere touchdown away from the AFC Championship Game. In other words, very few teams should have a bigger set of eyes on the prize than Cleveland, so why do they not appear to have eyes at all?

The answer is simple: Browns fans are just not used to being in this situation (at least not since the late 1980s). This means that their perennial inferiority has them stuck focusing solely on what is right in front of them, and that is a very rare win over the Steelers; one that came in a playoff game.

This is where the Pittsburgh beatdown should come into play, but this is not the only reason for it to do so. Sure, the Browns are a hated rival that struck some sudden relevance and as a result are running their mouths, so of course they need to be humbled if at all possible. But this particular drive to humble runs much deeper than that.

The aforementioned Browns inferiority mainly stems from their woes on the gridiron in a general sense, but if one team were to be utilized as a symbol of that, it would be the Pittsburgh Steelers. Whether it is in regards to the latter ruining postseason runs before they even begin, or to the former’s head coaches being traditionally fired after editions of the matchup in question, Cleveland has been bowing before their kings up north for quite some time now.

With this precedent being set, all the Steelers would presumably have to do is sweep the Browns this upcoming NFL year, which should be very much possible, despite them being the biggest threat to dethrone the current divisional champs. If a sweep is successfully pulled off, history has proven that the Browns have a very good chance of quieting down and eventually taking a step back from any solid chance of a Super Bowl season.

At the moment, the Pittsburgh-Cleveland fiasco is comparable to that of when a dad lets his son beat him at arm wrestling, and the son starts popping off afterward. All dad has to do then is ask for a rematch and show his son what real power is. Once that happens, Cleveland’s dysfunction, as previously established, will almost certainly rise to the top once again and subsequently kick them out of that Lombardi mindset entirely, for at least a little bit. That is what makes the Steelers meetings with the Browns in later 2021-22 more important than most of their previous ones in the modern era of the National Football League.