The Cleveland Browns Face a Fork in the Road on Sunday at Tennessee

In the famous words of Bill Parcells, “You are what your record says you are.” With that in mind, the Cleveland Browns are nothing more than a 1-2 football team coming off an early-season bye week. That can all change over the next five weeks, however.

If you are a Cleveland fan, then pretty much every website and publication has written an article about how winnable the next five games are for the Browns. The combined record of their next five opponents is 3-14, and three of those games will be played at home.

The Browns will travel to Tennessee this week and face a banged up Jake Locker. Their other road game during that stretch is at Jacksonville, who has been outscored 152-58 and allowed at least 33 points in every contest.

During this stretch of the Browns schedule, they will face the four worst offenses in the NFL and four of the worst nine defenses in the league. If you check their opponents' quarterback ratings this season, they will face the 22nd, 24th, 30th and 32nd ranked passers.

These are the types of teams that you have to beat to make the playoffs. These are the types of teams you have to dominate to prove you are for real in the NFL. These are the types of opponents that good teams can circle as wins before the season even begins.

“Yeah, I’m sure when we pop up on the schedule based on our current record and less than recent history, people are going to look at the Browns and if they want to pencil it in, it’ll be penciled in as a win more often than not,” head coach Mike Pettine told the media on Wednesday.

“That’s what we’re out to change. I just...like I said yesterday, that conjecture is for fans. It’s for media. There are way too many good players and too many good coaches in this league. You have to be prepared physically and mentally to play every single week at a high level or you’re going to get beat.”

Truer words were never spoken.

The first real test for the Browns was against the New Orleans Saints in Week 2. Pettine got his team to believe that not only were they not an underdog, but that they should win the game. This will be the second biggest test of his young head coaching career.

First of all, the Browns have had two full weeks to prepare for an awful Tennessee Titans team. The unfortunate part of that equation is that the Browns struggle most at stopping what the Titans do best. If Tennessee’s fifth-ranked rushing attack (based on yards per attempt) dominates the Browns’ 31st-ranked rushing defense, then things have not changed as much as everyone might have thought.

This is exactly the type of game that the Browns usually lose. With relevance on the horizon, the Browns have consistently proven since 1999 that they cannot handle the terrain. The discipline needed to win important games has continuously escaped this franchise.

A loss in Tennessee does not end the season. In fact, the Browns could still very well win the next four games and be 5-3 heading into a Thursday night prime-time game at Cincinnati. Though the likelihood of them bouncing back after stumbling out of the bye week is about as good as their special teams play this year.

David Richard/Associated Press

If the culture in Cleveland is going to change, then games like Sunday have to start falling into the win column. Coming close and taking home moral victories cannot be an option any longer. Because just as quickly as everyone realized how easy the next five games can be, they can realize the Browns belong in the same breath as those teams.

So much rides on the next five games. If quarterback Brian Hoyer wants to remain the starter throughout the entire season, then he needs to get the Browns in the playoff race. To do that he will need to play well. One hand washes the other.

For Pettine to prove he truly is different than the last half-dozen head coaches who sauntered through Cleveland, then he needs to start winning the winnable games. He needs to actually fix issues during the bye week and motivate his team to play above the rest of the league’s expectations.

For the organization to keep its feel good story at FirstEnergy Stadium rolling, they need to be successful over the next five weeks. The fans have embraced the stadium renovations and livened game atmosphere, but all that will fade quickly if the season unravels.

This can be the beginning of a change or the continuation of a 15-year nightmare on Lake Erie. Which direction it goes will be based solely on the players and coaching staff. The media, fans and other teams can say the Browns are ready to make a run all they want.

They can prognosticate that the Browns will be the surprise team in the AFC at the halfway point of the season until their faces turn blue. They can talk about how the Browns could be poised to make some serious noise in Week 12 when Josh Gordon returns from his suspension.

None of that will matter if the Browns do not start playing like a football team that belongs in those conversations. To belong there you have to win the easier games on your schedule. Once again, one hand washes the other.

It is time to start washing with steel wool. The germs from 12 double-digit losing seasons in 15 years have embedded themselves in the hands of the Browns. The germs have turned into infection and for far too long a cure has seemed hopeless.

It is time to cure the infection with victories. Those victories need to start in Tennessee Sunday afternoon.