Browns’ Lewis expects dogfight

Cleveland has lost 11 straight games to their rivals, the Steelers.

BEREA (AP) — Of his more than 10,000 career yards, Browns running back Jamal Lewis has fought hardest for the ones against the guys wearing black and gold.

Holes are hard to come by against the Super Bowl champion Steelers.

“You come out with 70 yards, that’s a good day against Pittsburgh,” Lewis said.

The durable Lewis has 36 100-yard games on his r sum , but only one of them came against the Steelers — in 2003 when he played for Baltimore. Running on fresh legs after missing two games with a hamstring injury, Lewis broke loose for 117 yards last week in an ugly 6-3 win over Buffalo.

Lewis knows he and Cleveland’s offensive line have their work cut out this Sunday, when the Browns (1-4) visit the Steelers (3-2) and a Pittsburgh defense allowing 70 rushing yards per game.

This will be Lewis’ 17th game against the Steelers. They’ve all followed a pattern.

“It’s physical and you know it’s going to be a dogfight all game,” he said Thursday “I know those guys. They know me and it’s always fun to play them. You know what they are going to bring. You know they are going to do and it’s just one of those games where you know you’ve got to bring your hard hat.

“It’s going to be a 60-minute fight.”

In recent years, the Steelers have been landing knockouts.

Pittsburgh has won 11 straight games over Cleveland and 17 of 18 since 2000, a dominant stretch that has turned one of the NFL’s fiercest rivalries into a laughable one-sided rout. The Browns haven’t beaten the Steelers since Oct. 5, 2003.

For the Browns to win Sunday, they’ll have to beat the Steelers at their own game: run the ball, stop the run.

The jersey numbers may have changed a bit in Pittsburgh, but Lewis sees the Steelers of today as the same team he faced as a rookie in 2000.

“They have a great, sound group and they play their positions well,” he said. “They don’t really make too many mistakes. Everybody plays their part and plays their position and that’s what makes it tough sledding as far as running the ball. At the same time, we just gotta keep eating at it, keep eating at it, taking the 2- and 3-yard gains and whatever they give you and just hope that you catch them in a bad position.”

That hasn’t happened often for Lewis.

He’s averaged just 58 yards per game against the Steelers, whose blitz-happy defense has been shutting down running games for decades.