Playoffs Possible for Cleveland

Like a giant, dangling carrot, the playoffs are right there in front of the Cleveland Browns.

“This is it,” cornerback Corey Fuller said. “We’ve waited for this kind of game for four years. This is what we wanted, playing for something at the end of the year.”

With a win over the Atlanta Falcons today, and some help from Oakland or Denver and Miami or the New York Jets, the Browns (8-7) can clinch a spot in the AFC playoffs for the first time since 1994.

“I feel good about where we are,” quarterback Tim Couch said. “I like our chances.”

Those chances will increase dramatically on Saturday if the Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs (8-7), one of 12 AFC teams who enter the weekend still alive in the jumbled playoff mix.

But none of the complicated formulas, scenarios or possibilities will matter much if the Browns don’t win their home season finale.

Cleveland is just 2-5 this season at home, where Browns fans have endured one disappointing loss after another.

“I think a win this week at home to keep us in the hunt would get a lot of fans back on our side,” said Couch, a lightning rod for abusive Browns fans all season. “I don’t blame them for being upset for the way we played at home. There’s no excuse.”

Fuller, too, wants nothing more than to get Cleveland fans excited.

“I just know what it’s going to be like in this town if we can make the playoffs,” he said. “When was the last time the Browns made it, ‘94? That’s going on 10 years. It’s time.”

For Fuller, beating Atlanta with a playoff spot on the line has added meaning.

As a member of the Minnesota Vikings in 1999, Fuller lost to the Falcons in one of the NFC’s most memorable championship games when Morten Andersen’s 38-yard field goal in overtime sent Atlanta to the Super Bowl.

“It took me two weeks to get over that game mentally and physically,” Fuller said. “That’s how much I put into it.”

The Vikings went 15-1 that season, with an offense that set several NFL records. But none of that mattered once Andersen’s kick split the uprights.

“Corey probably played the best defensive game we’ve ever seen,” said Browns linebacker Dwayne Rudd, one of Fuller’s teammates in Minnesota. “Corey was unbelievable. He played so well and made so many big plays that he thought it would be enough to get us to the Super Bowl.”

Fuller approaches this game with as much fervor, but he’s not on any one-man crusade for revenge.

“I have been here three years and got my head kicked in,” he said. “That’s enough motivation right there.”

Fuller is one of only 10 players remaining from Cleveland’s 1999 expansion team, which went 2-14 and then 3-13 in 2000. He has lived through the bad times with the Browns, and now that they’re on the verge of something special, Fuller doesn’t want to see it wasted.

And at 31, the nine-year veteran knows he won’t have many more chances.

“This week, it’s as important as going to the Super Bowl or the playoffs,” he said. “It ain’t just no other game for me. It’s big.”

*

The road back from his injury has been a grueling one, his lengthy rehabilitation made more difficult by nagging doubts about whether he would ever recover fully.

But Ed McCaffrey has responded with a productive season for the Denver Broncos.

Showing steady improvement throughout the year after breaking both bones in his lower left leg early in the 2001 season, the wide receiver has caught 62 passes for 791 yards entering today’s regular-season finale against Arizona. And he’s gained admiration from his teammates and coaches.

“He’s had a great year,” coach Mike Shanahan said Friday. “There were some questions going into summer camp if he’d be able to make it through, but he’s played well.”

Although he still limps occasionally, McCaffrey said his injured leg “feels pretty good.”

Sometime during this season, McCaffrey changed his attitude -- from being a receiver coming off a major injury to being a receiver, period.

“My mindset now is I’m like every other receiver in the league,” he said. “I want to make big plays every time I get a chance.

“I think I’ve progressed a lot from the beginning of the season. When I look at film from earlier in the year, I see I’m much further ahead of where I was at that point in the season. I realize now that in those first couple of weeks, I wasn’t 100 percent.

“Hopefully, with a whole offseason to go, I’ll be in even better shape next year.”

In 2000, McCaffrey had his third straight 1,000-yard season for the Broncos, catching a team-high 101 passes.

Primed for another big year, his season ended abruptly in the opener on Sept. 10, 2001.

Catching a pass over the middle in a Monday night game against the New York Giants, McCaffrey collided with safety Shaun Williams and broke the tibia and fibula in his left leg -- an injury that could have ended his career.