Consider all the upside of a Cleveland Browns team that should go 13-4: Doug Lesmerises

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The most surprising thing about last season, in which the Browns won more games than they had in 26 years, was the pedestrian manner in which they accomplished it. That 11-5 felt normal.

That leaves lots of room for improvement in 2021.

Neither Myles Garrett nor Baker Mayfield played their best football over a full 16 games. They’ll do even more now. I’m not sure any Brown did something they can’t do again, or can’t do better. Their initial 53-man roster this year compared to last year included 20 of 25 returning players on offense and nine of 25 returning players on defense. They kept the good players. They replaced the ones who needed replacing.

There are plenty of smart analytical ways to analyze the Browns’ total points and close wins from last season and think a slight step back is ahead. But I think there’s a ton of upside buried in the roster.

They were 9-2 as favorites and 2-3 as underdogs last year. Those two losses as favorites were at home in the wind against Vegas without Nick Chubb, and on the road at the Jets when the whole receiver room was knocked out by COVID. The two underdog wins were on the road at Dallas, which was sealed by a sparkling reverse by Odell Beckham Jr, and at Tennessee when the Browns blew the Titans off the field in the first half and took a 38-7 lead to the locker room. The losses as favorites were flukes. The wins as underdogs were more replicable.

You can look at that and view it as an easy schedule. It was. But it also didn’t provide many opportunities to surprise.

This season, there will be more of that. My rough look at the 2021 schedule finds 12 games where you’d expect the Browns to be favored, and five where you’d expect them to be underdogs. Last year doesn’t matter much to me when it comes to crunching numbers on a backslide, because the offense returns and will improve because of familiarity. The defense will improve because it is almost all new.

So let the Browns take care of business again, just like last year, in the games they should win. Let’s say 10-2 as favorites. And sprinkle in a little more magic in the games where they are underdogs — a 3-2 record instead of last year’s 2-3.

That’s 13-4. I think this is an ideal 12-4 team, but in a 17-game world, you’ve got to pick which why you’re leaning. I’ll lean toward more chances at more magic, and that means it’s 13-4.

A spin through other schedules finds Kansas City and Buffalo likely landing at 12 or 13 wins. Baltimore feels more like 11 or 12, which means I like the Browns to win the division. The race is on. Playoff seeding will matter. Imagine an AFC Championship Game here.

A Super Bowl is absolutely possible. But it takes a little daring to predict that kind of peak, even if all the pieces are there. So I’ll stop at another step in their path toward a title, and an appearance in the AFC Championship Game, but a loss. Yet it wouldn’t take much to create a season even greater than that. And the Browns certainly haven’t used up their magic yet.