I like Jim Donovan.

 

I like him a lot, in fact, both as a person – he’s funny, unpretentious and tough, yet tough as nails when he has to be — and as a football mind.

 

I think the longtime WKYC-TV sports director – he came to Cleveland in 1984 – knows more about the Browns than anyone. Plus Donovan, who has been the radio play-by-play voice of the Browns since they returned in 1999, is able to sort through everything and make sense of it in a way that even casual fans can understand. Or he can ramp up the sophistication of his opinion to make it appealing to ardent fans. He knows his audience and he adjusts what he says to fit the football IQ of those in it.

 

So with training camp set to begin on Thursday, I thought it would be interesting to hear what he say to about the Browns. The following are some high points:

 

*First and foremost, Donovan thinks this year’s Browns will win “five or six games. I’ll settle on six. That’s a good number. The team will look better and be better – that won’t be hard after last season – and it will show up in the record.”

 

*Donovan believes neither Cody Kessler nor Brock Osweiler are the franchise quarterbacks for whom the Browns are so desperately looking. “Kessler will start the season,” he said. “As for Osweiler, the Browns would like to trade him, and I think they will before the season starts.”

 

*And what about rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer? “At 6-4 (and 230 pounds), he certainly looks the part,” Donovan said. “He looks like the prototypical NFL quarterback. And he’s super-serious.

 

“I really liked him heading into last year at Notre Dame. That team lost a lot from what it had the year before, and that played a part in how he played. I certainly think he a chance – a chance – to be the franchise guy here.

 

“But he has the get the chance to show what can do over an extended period this season so the Browns know if they have to go back into the draft next year and use one of those five picks in the first two rounds to pick another quarterback. I think an ideal time to make that switch to Kizer would be after the Browns return from London (where they play the Minnesota Vikings on Oct. 29). They will have played eight games – half the season – and then they will have their bye. That would make his debut against the Lions (on Nov. 12 in Detroit). We’ll see if that’s what happens.”