CLEVELAND - At game time, sustained winds howled out of the northwest at 32 miles per hour. "And it's snowing," the Cleveland Browns' press box announcer felt the need to add.
Blizzarding was more like it.
"It wasn't brutally cold, so that helped," Cleveland Browns head coach Romeo Crennel said after Sunday's important victory over the Buffalo Bills had been achieved by the unusual score of 8-0.
Their sixth straight home win, ninth overall, kept the Browns on a playoff course with two games remaining. They did not clinch a postseason berth because Tennessee, their closest wild-card pursuer, beat Kansas City 26-17, but they virtually eliminated the Bills and pulled into a first-place tie with Pittsburgh in the AFC North when the Steelers lost 29-22 to Jacksonville.
The win also guaranteed the Browns their first winning season since 2002, when they went 9-7 and last made the playoffs.
"Nobody believed in us," receiver Braylon Edwards said. "Everybody said we were nothing, but I knew from training camp it was going to be different this season. Everything felt right. We're proud to be Browns right now."
They owed Sunday's success to Jamal Lewis, whose 163 yards on 33 carries proved the proper prescription for the conditions ... and to a defense that dug in and denied the big play ... and to place-kicker Phil Dawson, whose two field goals were huge, especially his 49-yarder through the swirling snow late in the first half.
And, yes, they benefited from the weather, which netted them a safety when a snap sailed over the head of Bills punter Brian Moorman and he intentionally kicked it through the end zone. That helped make possible the first final score of its kind in the NFL since the Chicago Cardinals blanked the Minneapolis Red Jackets in 1929.
"It was like a Turkey Bowl or a Christmas Bowl, like everybody plays in their backyard," Browns receiver Joe Jurevicius said. "Nothing was precise. We did a good job of handling it."
Bills running back Marshawn Lynch, a California native, put it this way: "It looked like something I saw on the Discovery Channel, like something about the North Pole."
Incredibly, Dawson's long boot traveled a similar course as his field goal against the Baltimore Ravens, the one that hit the back of the crossbar and forced overtime. Only difference? It bounced through the uprights the right way this time, leaving no need for interpretation.
"I told him, 'Phil, you've got that kick down,' " punter and kick holder Dave Zastudil said. "I said if you go to Vegas, bring me. That's pretty good stuff."
Dawson's kick made it 8-0 and Cleveland Browns Stadium, which seemed to contain at least 50,000 souls, could have emptied at that point for all the scoring that wasn't to come in the second half.
Players searched their memories to recall playing in such conditions. It didn't take long. It was colder in Pittsburgh last season, but the added impediments of wind and snow made this contest unique.
"Not the coldest, but the toughest," said Zastudil, who proved it by slipping down and launching a 7-yard punt in the second half.
In the end, the Browns found their footing. And now they march on.
