This new Browns regime stayed true to its board in the NFL Draft over the weekend.

It followed its blueprint completely, using a lot of its pick to address two extremely weak position areas, wide receivers and pass rushers.

Good for the Browns. They did it the right way. It made sense.

At the same, though, I am going to stay true to my board. I think it is also the same board that many of you reading this, have.

With that, then, following the draft, I have to repeat what I’ve said for the last several months. It is that while the other picks are important, they pale in comparison – greatly so, in fact – to what the Browns did at quarterback.

They used the last of their three picks in the third round, at No. 93 overall, to take USC quarterback Cody Kessler. Head coach Hue Jackson said he was going to draft a quarterback, and he did. He promised he was going to get this quarterback situation right, and he asked everybody to “trust me” in this endeavor.

Do we really have any other choice?

Jackson is coaching the team. He is the quarterback whisperer. The Browns are all in on him. They are giving full authority do whatever, whenever, wherever and however to straighten out the most important position in team sports, and a spot that has bedeviled the Browns ever since they took the field again in 1999.

Drafting Kessler, a short guy with pinpoint accuracy, was the second salvo Jackson fired in this task. The first was signing free agent Robert Griffin III.

There are a lot of parts of the Browns that Jackson has to fix if the team is to get back on track.

However, nothing happens until he gets quarterback figured out. The Browns have absolutely no chance until that happens.

We’ve been over all this countless times.

As such, then, for the Browns, this draft was all about the quarterback. What happens with Kessler will define this entire draft, and will also go a long way toward defining this regime’s entire tenure.

Yes, it is that important.

What do you remember about 1985? It is that the Browns found their quarterback in Bernie Kosar in the draft – OK, the NFL Supplemental Draft, but the draft nonetheless. It defined the Browns of that era, and it defined the tenures of both General Manager Ernie Accorsi and head coach Marty Schottenheimer.

The 1999 draft, the one that produced Tim Couch, also defined those Browns, that regime, that GM and that head coach, but all in a negative way.

So I will sit back and watch Kessler so as to be able to evaluate this draft.

To evaluate the Browns of this era.

To evaluate Jackson.

And to evaluate Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown.

It is really no more complicated than that.

Why?

Because my board – and perhaps yours, too – says so. That’s why.

And just as it was a good enough reason for Hue Jackson, Sashi Brown and the Browns, it is also good enough reason for me.