NFL quarterbacks come in all shapes and sizes.

 

Some of the most highly-touted ones don’t show up as expected.

 

And some of the best ones show up when you least expect it.

 

Indeed, if finding a franchise quarterback were an exact science, like reading ingredients and following instructions from a recipe, then everybody would have one.

 

But it isn’t, so they don’t.

 

And the Browns, of course, are one of the “everybody” who doesn’t have its franchise guy.

 

All of this is why you need to keep an open mind as Kevin Hogan makes his first pro start when the Browns play the Houston Texans on Sunday at NRG Stadium.

 

The Browns have gone through three quarterbacks this year alone while trying to find their man.

 

Cody Kessler, a third-round choice in the 2016 NFL Draft, went into training camp as the starter. But that – he — didn’t last. He failed miserably. It doesn’t seem like he’s even on the team anymore.

 

Brock Osweiler, the Browns’ version of Steve Austin in being the $16 million man (that this is how much debt they took on when they acquired him in a trade with these same Texans), then got his chance, being named the starter at the beginning of the preseason. But that – he – didn’t last. He isn’t even on the team anymore.

 

Toledo native and Notre Dame product DeShone Kizer, a second-round draft pick this year and a man hailed by a good number of people as being the franchise quarterback, was then made the starter halfway through the exhibition season. But that – he – didn’t last, as he was benched at halftime of last Sunday’s 17-14 loss to the New Your Jets.

 

Now the baton has been passed to Hogan, who came into the league as a draft pick, too – but not a top-round one or a valued one. He was selected in the fifth round in 2016 by Kansas City Chiefs, who cut him the end of the preseason that year, almost immediately after which he was signed by the Browns. So he comes to Cleveland off the scrap heap. No one has ever proclaimed him the franchise anything.

 

Does Hogan, not to be confused with Colonel Hogan of the old TV show, “Hogan’s Heroes,” have even the slightest chance to be the guy?

 

Before you say – no, make that shout — “No,” let me ask some questions?

 

Did anybody way back in the day, 1962, when a non-descript quarterback by the name of Frank Ryan arrived in a ho-hum trade with the Los Angeles Rams, think the Browns had acquired their franchise guy? No! Are you kidding?

 

In four years in the NFL, all with the Rams, Ryan, a fifth-round draft choice in 1958 out of the football factory known as Rice, had completed more than 50 percent of his passes in a season just once — a modest 50.7 percent in 1961 – and had only 15 touchdown passes with 20 interceptions. Those aren’t exactly Otto Graham-like numbers.

 

And did we mention that his best quarterback rating was but 68.3?

 

Two years later, in 1964, Ryan led the NFL with 25 touchdown passes and then fired three more in the league championship contest, leading the Browns to an overwhelming 27-0 victory over the Baltimore Colts for their first title in nine years.

 

Ryan helped the Browns back to the NFL Championship Game in 1965, and the following year, he was the NFL leader again with a franchise-record 29 TD throws.

 

In the five-year stretch from 1963, when he took over the starting job full-time, through 1967, the last season he held it, he was one of the best quarterbacks in the game – and in Browns history – with 117 touchdown passes.

 

Similarly, in 1972, when the Browns used a lowly, throw-away 13th-round draft pick – the draft is only seven rounds now — to take a short, skinny, then non-committed quarterback from San Diego State named Brian Sipe, did anyone think they had chosen an NFL Most Valuable Player-type quarterback?

 

No, of course not! Again, are you kidding?

 

And even less was thought of Sipe after he spent his first two seasons in the league on the taxi squad, the forerunner of today’s practice squad?

 

But from 1978, his first season as the full-time starter, through 1980, he threw 79 TD passes, including in that last year when he had the best season ever in club history when he broke Ryan’s mark with 30 TD throws, a league high, for a club-record 4,132 passing yards en route to being Cleveland’s first NFL MVP in 15 years, and still its last. It was the most exciting season in Browns history, as the Kardiac Kids won the franchise’s first AFC Central in nine years and its first playoff appearance in eight seasons.

 

Sipe still holds almost all of the team’s career passing marks.

 

This is not at all to say that Hogan, who is also from a West Coast school in Stanford, will be like Sipe or Ryan or any other accomplished Browns quarterback in history.

 

What is being suggested, though, is that Hogan deserves the chance to try and have a legitimate chance to be that guy, the franchise guy. And his effort – his story, his legacy, whatever that turns out to be – begins on Sunday in Houston, which, incidentally, is where Rice is located and where Sipe led the 1980 Browns to one of their biggest victories, a 17-14 nail-biter over the Oilers that gave them control of the division race.

 

Good karma?

 

Or good for nothing?

 

We’ll see if that means anything at all.