Steelers Don’t Go Easy on Browns or Zeier, 20-3 : Pro football: Cleveland’s rookie quarterback has rough night, while Pittsburgh’s Kordell Stewart stars.

Art Modell was missing, and so was any semblance of the Cleveland Browns’ offense in probably their last visit to Pittsburgh as the Steelers seized a two-game lead in the AFC Central with a 20-3 victory Monday night.

It was Cleveland’s 46th and probably last regular-season trip to Pittsburgh, but the Browns didn’t give their fans much to remember. And the 1,000 or so Cleveland fans with tickets mimicked their team by abandoning the Browns and leaving for home early in the fourth quarter.

By then, the Steelers’ revived Blitzburgh defense had harassed rookie quarterback Eric Zeier into a succession of incompletions, fumbles and too-hurried throws, and their own rookie quarterback, Kordell Stewart, upstaged him by throwing for a touchdown on his first NFL pass.

Stewart ran nearly the width of the field and back again to hit Ernie Mills on a disputed two-yard go-ahead touchdown pass in the second quarter, finishing a 75-yard drive kept alive by Stewart’s own 11-yard third-down catch.

“You put the ball in his hands and anything can happen,” Steeler Coach Bill Cowher said of Stewart.

Stewart’s touchdown probably shouldn’t have counted, as TV replays showed Mills going out of bounds in the right corner of the end zone before making the pivotal catch deep in the left corner against the Browns (4-6). A receiver cannot leave the field of play and return to make a catch.

“The way [Stewart] was running around, it looked like a pickup play,” Cowher said. “But that’s why we got him the ball, because he can stretch a defense so many ways.”

Lining up at quarterback or wide receiver on third downs, Stewart threw for a touchdown, caught two passes and ran for a first down.

Running back Erric Pegram ran for 112 yards on 26 carries, 76 of them in the second half for Pittsburgh (6-4). It was the Steelers’ first 100-yard rushing game since the now-retired Barry Foster’s 133 yards in a 29-9 playoff victory over Cleveland last season.

A Pittsburgh radio station asked Steelers fans to wear orange armbands showing empathy for Brown fans, whose team has announced a move to Baltimore next season, but virtually none were spotted.