Every franchise has a team its fans measure everything against. For the Browns, one of the most beloved is the group that made heart-stopping finishes a weekly event in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those teams were not always the most talented, but they found ways to win when it looked like they were finished. Nearly 5 decades later, this year’s Browns are starting to remind people of them.
Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com compared Deshaun Watson’s season to one of the most famous stretches in franchise history.
“Deshaun Watson is turning the 2026 Browns into a modern-day version of Brian Sipe’s Kardiac Kids from 1979 and 1980, one heart-thumping victory at a time. In those two seasons, Sipe orchestrated 11 fourth-quarter game-winning drives — seven in 1979 and four in 1980 — and eight come-from-behind victories. The seven fourth-quarter winning drives in 1979 are a Browns record. With 11 games to go, he has a chance to match Sipe’s extraordinary 47-year-old feat from 1979,” Cabot wrote.
Watson already has 4 game-winning drives in the 4th quarter, which leads the NFL. Three more would tie Sipe’s franchise record, and 4 more would give him sole possession of it, with 11 games left.
The comparison has been building for weeks. Watson became the first Browns quarterback since Sipe in 1980 to throw go-ahead touchdowns in the final 4 minutes of consecutive games, hitting Blake Whiteheart in Tampa Bay and Harold Fannin Jr. against the Carolina Panthers. He then set up Andre Szmyt’s winning field goals in the final seconds against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens.
The Kardiac Kids became a big part of Browns history. Sipe won NFL MVP in 1980, and Cleveland won the AFC Central before its season ended with the heartbreaking Red Right 88 playoff loss to the Oakland Raiders. Those teams gave a generation of fans some of the most thrilling football they ever saw.
This year’s team is following a similar pattern. All 4 of Cleveland’s wins have come by 4 points or fewer, and the Browns have been outscored by 16 points on the season. Like those Sipe-led teams, they rarely make it easy, but they keep finding a way.
The difference is how the games are being won. Sipe’s Browns relied on a high-powered passing attack, while these Browns lean on a defense that ranks among the best in the league and keeps games close until Watson gets the ball back late.
There is a warning in that formula. Teams that live on the edge every week usually see some of those close games go the other way eventually, and the Browns already learned that in a 17-12 loss to the New York Jets.
Still, the chance at history is real. A 3-game road trip starts Sunday in Tennessee.
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