BEREA, Ohio — It has been seven years since there was talk of playoff football in Cleveland, but now the drought is over. The drought of talking about it is over, that is.

The Cleveland Browns have seven games remaining, starting with the Houston Texans on Sunday in FirstEnergy Stadium. Anything can happen, but for now the Browns are 6-3 and alone atop the AFC North.

They haven’t been alone in first place this late in the year since 1994 in the AFC Central with Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and the Houston Oilers.

Two years later, that Cleveland franchise was in Baltimore and the Oilers were playing their last season in Houston as the franchise moved to Nashville and was renamed the Tennessee Titans. In 1999, Cleveland was again awarded and the new-age Browns were born. Or reborn. In 2002, the NFL awarded Houston an expansion team and the Texans were born.

So it is that these two second-chance NFL franchises will meet Sunday.

“I think as long as you talk about playoffs in the context of ‘the next game is the most important one and it’s a step towards that direction’ then I think it’s OK,” Browns coach Mike Pettine said. “I think it’s a mistake if you just ignore it.

“Of course it was our goal in the beginning of the year. Be a playoff team. Why not us? We talked about the number of teams that didn’t make the playoffs one year that make it the next. We weren’t going to hide from it, but at the same time, they have to know that in order to accomplish that, we have to be extraordinary. We have to be extraordinary each week.”

The Browns won five of their last six games. They are coming off a convincing 24-3 victory over the Bengals on Nov. 6. Their most lopsided win before that was a 31-10 trouncing of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Oct. 12. The Browns followed that by getting drilled 24-6 in Jacksonville.

Pettine reminded his team of the Jacksonville game before giving his players four days off after the game in Cincinnati and delivered the same message when players got back to work on Tuesday.

Safety Donte Whitner, who spent the previous three seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, believes the Browns have what it takes to be a playoff team.

“We stack up very well,” Whitner said. “Each year we reached the NFC Championship and the style of football that we played there was similar to the style of football that we play here.

“We wanted to get a lot of turnovers because we understood that getting turnovers, you get the offense the ball more and there is a direct correlation between turnovers and winning. We wanted to play a physical style of football, a relentless style of football (in San Francisco), and it’s similar here.”

The Browns are plus-nine in takeaway/giveaway. They have 13 interceptions and four fumble recoveries. Brian Hoyer has thrown four interceptions and the Browns have lost four fumbles.

NOTES: Among those who did not practice Wednesday were TE Jordan Cameron (concussion), DE Phil Taylor (knee), S Tashaun Gipson and S Johnson Bademosi (concussions). … LT Joe Thomas was rested, per usual Wednesday routine.