CLEVELAND -- The crowd of 73,018 was roaring, the players on the field were scurrying and the clock was ticking.
"In all honesty, I had no idea what was going on," Cleveland Browns cornerback Daylon McCutcheon admitted later. "It was so crazy, I didn't know how much time was left, what down it was, nothing. Everything was all over the place."
Not Courtney Brown.
His focus was singular.
The Steelers, down by three with 14 seconds left and the ball at the Cleveland 6, decided to gun for a touchdown. From his spot at the left end of the defensive line, Brown set his sights squarely on Steelers quarterback Kent Graham and tuned out the din around him.
"Sack the quarterback," Brown recalled thinking to himself. "Do everything I can to sack the quarterback."
Seconds later, Graham couldn't find an open target and tried to bolt forward out of the pocket. But before he could gain any momentum, Brown bounced off a block, slid to his right and used every bit of his 6-foot-4, 266-pound frame to wrap up Graham and slam him to the grass at the 10.
That thud sealed Cleveland's 23-20 victory and kicked off quite a celebration by the lake. It was the Browns' first win at home since rejoining the NFL last season, and it pushed them to 2-1 on the heels of a 2-14 expansion run in 1999.
And, perhaps just as important to the franchise, the game marked Brown's big-league breakout party. A graduate of Penn State University and the first overall pick in the NFL draft this year, he spent much of the day overpowering Steelers rookie lineman Marvel Smith, registering four tackles and his first three professional sacks.
None bigger than the last.
"It felt good, but it felt even better to get the win," Brown said. "I didn't know what Graham was going to do. I thought he was going to throw the ball away. Fortunately, I was able to get to him first."
Brown, like many of his teammates, expressed surprise that Steelers Coach Bill Cowher elected not to try a field goal at that stage.
"I thought they'd kick it and go to overtime," Brown said. "But I guess they were trying to win the game. That's the coach's decision."
And it was one which drew plenty of second-guessing in the Cleveland locker room.
"I'm not the coach, but I'm trying to figure out why they didn't tie the game," cornerback Corey Fuller said. "You know that if you don't throw it in the end zone or you don't throw it away, hey, game over. I mean, they've got 14 seconds left, and they think they're going to hike the ball again if they don't get it in?"
"It surprised me," fullback Marc Edwards said. "I'm sure the crowd had something to do with it, but that was a mismanaged clock."
"It surprised me, too," defensive end Keith McKenzie said. "But I sure am glad they did it."
Some Browns chose to blame Graham rather than Cowher.
"I guess I was surprised at first, but their coach is going for the win and I can understand that," linebacker Rahim Abdullah said. "I thought the quarterback should've just thrown the ball away."
For the most part, though, Cleveland's coaches and players chose simply to give credit to Brown.
"Courtney made a great play," defensive tackle Orpheus Roye said. "He didn't give Graham the time to do anything. Courtney's got those big, long arms, and he had him all wrapped up."
At Penn State, Brown finished as the school's all-time leader with 33 sacks, but he had none in his first two NFL games despite leading Cleveland with four quarterback hurries. That was a topic of discussion between Coach Chris Palmer and General Manager Dwight Clark a few hours before kickoff.
"I was talking about how disciplined he is," Palmer recalled. "I said that, one of these days, he would start stepping up and making plays. I'm very pleased with his performance."
Carmen Policy, the Browns' president, went a large step further.
"It just couldn't be a better day," Policy said. "For our franchise to finally get a win here for our home fans, to do it against Pittsburgh and to have our top pick be the hero, what could be better than that?"
Brown had only one thing in mind: A sack 
