CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Let’s call the Browns what they clearly are: The favorites to win the AFC North in 2019.

Something involving a Tennessee tie still gives the Browns a one percent chance at a playoff spot this season, but when the Steelers beat New England on Sunday night, eliminating any chance of the Browns winning the division, the last two games of this season became the first two games of next season.

The team playing these last two against Cincinnati and at Baltimore and all 16 of those babies a year from now -- that team’s pretty good.

You waited for these Browns, and they’re here. Even if you didn’t wait for them, if you threatened to boycott them through 1-31 and hated every draft pick traded and every veteran jettisoned, they’re here.

There may not be a fanbase that ever earned a team as much as Browns fans earned the 2019 Cleveland Browns, who, again, are the division favorites according to some experts. While the 2018 playoff talk was always a little far-fetched, the 2019 playoffs aren’t just realistic, they’re expected.

No one knew what to make of the 2018 Browns, the confusion caused by Hue Jackson hiding a real team behind his 0-16 incompetence a year ago. So this 4-2 record under Gregg Williams can feel like a surprise when it shouldn’t. It’s like a home improvement show where you rip up the shag carpet and find beautiful hardwood floors. The hardwood was there.

Hue Jackson was shag carpet.

So a quick look at the 2019 schedule (yeah, we’re doing this) finds two wins against the fading Bengals plus wins over Buffalo, Miami, the Jets, Arizona and San Francisco. That’s seven wins over teams clearly worse than the Browns right now, teams that aren’t magically going to get better than Cleveland. Let’s figure splits with Pittsburgh and Baltimore, because the division doormat days are over.

That’s nine.

That leaves New England, Seattle, the Rams and one opponent each from the AFC West (probably Denver) and AFC South (probably Tennessee). Give the Browns one win against the first three teams, and let’s assume the Broncos and Titans, or their ilk, can be handled.

That’s 12-4.

And you don’t feel crazy right now. Because there are pieces of a 12-4 team hiding in this season.

If the Browns beat the Bengals and Ravens to end the season, Williams will be 6-2 as a head coach. That’s half of 12-4. Even if the Browns don’t beat Baltimore, they’ll kick around those lowly Bengals at home on Sunday, and their 7-8-1 record would include the fiasco against Oakland, the overtime loss at Tampa Bay and the game kicked away at New Orleans. Turn those into wins, and that’s 10 victories, which is almost 12.

Baker Mayfield didn’t play for the first two games. Nick Chubb barely played for the first six.

Give Chubb a full season of what he’s done since he was rescued from the bench, and, by the numbers, that’s nearly 1,400 rushing yards. Give Mayfield 16 games of an offensive coordinator like Freddie Kitchens (but it doesn’t have to be Kitchens) and that’s 4,250 passing yards, 71 percent completions, and 35 touchdown passes.

It’s not just the quarterback and rookie running back. There isn’t any position where the Browns will get worse. But there’s plenty of room for improvement.

At receiver, they went into camp assuming Josh Gordon and Corey Coleman would serve as two of their top receivers. They survived without them (does anyone really miss Gordon?) and now can add to Jarvis Landry, Antonio Callaway and Rashard Higgins through the draft or free agency.

On the offensive line, the interior is rock solid, and they’ve stumbled through this season at left tackle after John Dorsey executed no real plan for replacing Hall of Famer Joe Thomas. Greg Robinson has helped stabilize the spot, but again, this position will be addressed with draft capital or cap space.

The whole team is young, especially the defense. The Browns entered the season as the second-youngest team in the league. Of the 22 Browns who have played the most snaps, none are older than 30. Of the 13 defenders who have played the most, only Jamie Collins and T.J. Carrie are older than 26.

The Browns have the most cap space in the league, all their own picks in the first six rounds of the 2019 draft, plus an extra third-rounder and two extra fifth-rounders. Injuries cost them Joe Schobert for three games this season, Terrance Mitchell for eight, Denzel Ward for two and will cost them Christian Kirksey for nine. Injuries are part of the game, but their depth has shown up on defense (though we all realized how vital Schobert is).

At 4-2 in the last seven weeks, the Browns are tied for the eighth-best record in the league, behind only Chicago, the L.A. Chargers, Houston, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Tennessee and Dallas. They’re tied with the Chiefs and ahead of teams like the Rams, Patriots and Steelers.

They’re real.

And it’s not because they’re playing hard or working together, though they are. This is actual talent and competent coaching. This team was pieced together with draft picks Mayfield, Chubb, Myles Garrett, Ward, Schobert, Larry Ogunjobi, Jabrill Peppers, Genard Avery and Callaway, trades for Damarious Randall, Landry and Jamie Collins, free agent signings Kevin Zeitler, J.C. Tretter and Mitchell, and holdovers like Kirksey, Duke Johnson and Joel Bitonio.

This wasn’t only grabbing a quarterback at No. 1. This was a plan, one that required patience, a plan that some saw coming and others didn’t. There were mistakes along the way, but this required move after move that hit, under both Sashi Brown and Dorsey.

Last October, in a plea for patience, I wrote, “We need to stop saying the Browns are doing this to the fans and understand they are trying to do this for the fans.”

Whether you hated the teardown or understood and appreciated it, you lived through it. It was ugly. Shag carpet always is. The 0-16 parade is less than a year old. But all that is gone, for good. This is the result.

Not a playoff team in 2018. But a playoff team in 2019. A division favorite, according to those in the know.

And 2019 starts in First Energy Stadium on Sunday against Jackson and Cincinnati, with another chance to walk all over that shag carpet and show what was buried underneath the whole time.