Training camp is off to a fast start for the Browns.

In fact, the fast start started before camp itself started.

And that’s tremendously good news.

When Browns head coach Hue Jackson met with the media on Thursday, the day before camp began, he was asked how soon he expected to name a starting quarterback.

 

“Before the first preseason game,” he said in matter-of-fact fashion. “You have to. It’s just the right thing to do.

“So you guys will be sitting here two weeks from now saying, ‘Here we go.’ ”

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Browns finally have a head coach who knows how to handle quarterbacks.

In the past, from Butch Davis to Romeo Crennel to Eric Mangini to Pat Shurmur to Mike Pettine, the Browns had coaches who believed in quarterback derbies in camp, and holding off to the last possible second before announcing a starter.

Yikes!

Double-yikes!!

Nothing – absolutely nothing — could be worse.

A coach can wait until the last possible second before naming a starter at right guard, left defensive end and free safety and the team won’t be negatively affected. But if he does that at quarterback, then you might as well stick a fork into the team. It’s done. Finished. Kaputski.

As we’ve said many, many times on this site – and will say many, many more times as we go forward — quarterback is the most important position in team sports. As such, even if he isn’t the best player on the team, the quarterback is the club’s leader. With that in mind, then, a pecking order has to be established at quarterback ASAP so the team can begin rallying around the starter.

The fact that, according to Jackson, the starter will be known by the time the Browns begin the preseason at Green Bay on Aug. 12, will give them four practice games and just over a full month’s worth of time to gel around their leader before they play their regular-season opener at Philadelphia on Sept. 11.

Again, why do it that way?

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Jackson said.

That is, it’s simply common sense.

To do anything else would be … well, silly, self-defeating and crazy – so Mangini era Browns.

Thank goodness that craziness is over in Cleveland!

But that’s not where the fast start ended on Thursday. The Browns also made their two most controversial players, running back Isaiah Crowell and wide receiver Josh Gordon, available to the media that day. In the past, the Browns kept controversial players away from the media for as long as possible, obviously thinking that if they just ignored the elephant in the room long enough, he would eventually go away. Instead, what happens is that the elephant gets bigger and bigger and bigger as media people speculate about the players in question and get the rumor mill ramped up to a frenzied pitch.

By letting the media talk to Gordon and Crowell right away and getting everything out into the open, it let the pressure out of the situation. No outrageous speculation. No crazy rumor. No nothing.

So when the Browns held their first camp practice on Friday, they were able to concentrate on football and not any circus sideshows going on.

Now if the Browns can keep making heady, common-sense decisions like the two mentioned here, this season might – we said might – be a little better than what people think.

We’ll see.