It’s the best time to be a Browns fan in 20 years. Should you hop on the bandwagon?

With apologies to the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams, the Cleveland Browns are the most interesting team in the NFL. Hue Jackson’s third year at the helm of the league’s most snakebit franchise has been occasionally great, occasionally cursed, and sometimes frustrating — but it’s never been boring.

This may be as weird to read as it is to type, but in this, our year of the lord 2018, the Browns are awesome to watch.

Through five games, they’ve been to overtime three times. They’ve won two games by four points or fewer. They’ve lost two games, each by a field goal. They’ve played five hours, 28 minutes, and 12 seconds of football in five weeks, and nearly all of it has been in the midst of a one-possession game.

They’ve had two games marred by terrible kicking, with one of those also running afoul of the league’s controversial new roughing the passer rule. A loss to the Raiders was made possible my some terrible calls and the universe’s stark reminder that the only way to truly break a heart is to give it hope first. Their first win in more than 20 months soaked the city of Cleveland with free beer-adjacent beverages. Their second relinquished Baltimore’s claim as the AFC North’s top team.

At 2-2-1, the club has already tripled the number of total victories Jackson’s had as an NFL coach. And with a young roster loaded with intriguing, but largely unproven, talent, 2018 could be a pivotal year in the Browns’ journey from league doormat to eventual contender.

But somewhere in that upward climb lies an important question.

Cheering for the Browns is football’s equivalent of watching the Futurama episode where Fry finds the fossilized remains of his old dog Seymour. It’s good for a few laughs, a little hope, and some interesting twists and turns, but by the time the credits roll, all you’re able to comprehend is a world of darkness and regret. 2018 might not be any different than the previous 19 seasons that ended with zero playoff wins and exactly one (1) Pro Bowl quarterback (Derek Anderson), but it’s giving off the impression it will be.

The Browns will take a .500 or better record into Week 6 of the NFL season for the first time since 2014. The ‘14 squad represents Cleveland’s high water mark of the past decade, a 7-9 franchise defined by the overachievement of players like Brian Hoyer, Andrew Hawkins, and Craig Robertson. The closest thing the team had to a legitimate star was Joe Haden.

This year’s team is the Harlem Globetrotters by comparison. 2018’s No. 1 pick, Baker Mayfield, is living up to standards behind center and looks like the team’s first homegrown franchise quarterback since Bernie Kosar. Offseason acquisition Jarvis Landry has proven himself worthy of the $75 million deal he signed in April; he’s on pace for a 1,200+ yard season despite being the only recognizable name on the Browns’ wide receiver depth chart. Nick Chubb, Duke Johnson, and Carlos Hyde have made up a multifaceted tailback platoon that’s run for more yardage than all but one other NFL team this fall.

The defense could wind up being even better. The Christian Kirksey-Joe Schobert-Jamie Collins pairing in the middle of the field bring Cleveland a steady linebacking core. In front of them, an as-advertised Myles Garrett leads a rising defensive front where no starter is older than 25 years old. In fact, aside from Collins, none of the team’s defensive starters is older than 26 this fall — which means that group is only going to get better.

Most importantly, that talent is turning opportunity into wins.

The Browns may have only two victories since 2016, but those wins were beacons of strength in games where Cleveland could have sunk to the level of franchise expectations and settled for nothing. They trailed the Jets 14-3 at halftime before Mayfield provided the spark his team needed for a drought-snapping, primetime triumph. They could have shrank from the spotlight after missing a game-winning field goal at the end of regulation and then turning the ball over on downs in Ravens territory in Week 5 — instead Mayfield dragged the team from its own five-yard line and into the Baltimore red zone to set up a game-winning field goal.

Like I said, awesome. But ...

It’s difficult to believe, but this Cleveland team can make a reasonable case that it should be 5-0. Instead, a combination of questionable calls and regrettable kicks has left Jackson’s team at an unlucky 2-2-1.

In Week 1, Garrett ran afoul of the league’s renewed emphasis on roughing the passer calls when this play ...

... turned what would have been a fourth-and-goal field goal attempt into a James Conner touchdown. Those extra four points would be vitally important for Pittsburgh.

From there, the Browns squandered several different chances to beat their AFC North rival. Tyrod Taylor drove his team into Steeler territory tied 21-21 with fewer than 30 seconds left, then threw an interception on first-and-10 from the Pittsburgh 43. Three straight overtime possessions ended in three-and-outs. And when the Steelers attempted to hand the game to Cleveland with a fumble in their own territory, Zane Gonzalez was there to get his game-winning field goal attempt blocked from 41 yards out.

The next week, Gonzalez was left to play goat — he missed two field goals and an extra point in the fourth quarter of a 21-18 loss to the Saints — and then left off the roster after general manager John Dorsey released him the following Monday. Two weeks later, officials would blow a potentially game-sealing fumble dead before it could turn into a Cleveland touchdown ...

... and then overturn a key spot on a definitely game-sealing third-down conversion, allowing the Raiders just enough leverage to make a stunning comeback and earn an overtime win.

So, yes, supporting the Browns is still painful and dumb. The wins are drama. The losses are drama. Nothing is boring, and everything is at least a little awful.

But there’s something to Cleveland’s rebuild. Two decades of pouring cement into a swamp has finally settled into something like a stable foundation. The low-hanging smog that surrounds FirstEnergy Stadium, an invisible mist that turned almost every prospect but Joe Thomas into something less than his potential, has yet to mutate this latest crop of young talent. Finding the silver lining on the Browns’ Sundays no longer requires squinting your pupils down to horizontal lines.

That’s different. And unlike 2014’s overachieving 7-9 season or 2007’s unsustainable 10-6 mark (the year that made us think both Derek Anderson AND Braylon Edwards were Pro Bowl talents), this year’s roster is loaded with young, homegrown talent that still has plenty of room to improve from here. Those are the players — Mayfield, Garrett, Schobert, Chubb, Landry, Larry Ogunjobi, Denzel Ward, and several others — who can turn this hope into something bigger.

That is, as long as they don’t Browns it all up first.