If you like a good rumor – and, really, who doesn’t? – then this is your time of year, especially if you’re a pro football fan.

 

As we inch closer and closer to the first day of the NFL Draft on April 28 – it’s just 17 days away now, if you can believe that – the rumors are flying around like mosquitoes on a hot summer night. You can’t elude them no matter how hard you try.

 

This team is going to trade up in the first round that night.

 

That team is going to trade down.

 

And then there’s this other team that’s going to trade up and trade back down, and then back up again, being the first club in NFL history to resemble a teeter-totter on draft night.

 

That last team – any of these three teams, in fact – may be the Browns.

 

It would be nice if, just for once, one of the other 31 franchises in the league would be that team, and the Browns could sit back near the bottom part of the draft after having had a lot of success the previous season, and watch the rumors fly around someone else for a change.

 

But, in coming off yet another bad season, that team is once again the Browns, who have the No. 2 overall draft pick and are thus right in the thick of all those rumors.

 

The opinions of those floating those rumors are that the Browns, being well aware that they need help at a lot of different positions, will trade out of that No. 2 spot so as to gain more picks and be able to fill more of those holes.

 

Sure, that makes sense, and as such I can certainly see the Browns making that deal, getting those extra picks and hopefully solving a series of their personnel problems. And if they did just that, it would please a segment of the fanbase.

 

But while that is a viable option, it is definitely not the best option. Now, it might be the best option for any number of other teams, but it is not so for the Browns.

 

Those other teams don’t need a quarterback.

 

The Browns, on the other hand, need a quarterback – a franchise quarterback — desperately so. They have, of course, needed a franchise quarterback not just since 1999 when the expansion era began, but since midway through the 1993 season when Bernie Kosar was unceremoniously cut.

 

Add up the abilities of all the quarterbacks who have played for the Browns since then – and it’s a long list indeed – and it doesn’t equal what Kosar gave the club for 8½ seasons. It doesn’t come even close, really.

 

I’m as patient as the next guy, but really, enough is enough, isn’t it? Kosar hasn’t played here in 23 years, so isn’t it about time that the Browns find his heir apparent?

 

They need to do that before Kosar gets old enough to start receiving Social Security benefits. Don’t laugh. He will be 53 late this year.

 

For that matter, while we’re on the subject of Kosar, let’s use him as an example. The 1984 Browns were picked before the season to win the AFC Central title after having gone 9-7 in 1983, just missing qualifying for the playoffs. But it didn’t happened. What ensued was a disaster. They finished only 5-11, causing head coach Sam Rutigliano to get fired at the midway point of the season.

 

So what went wrong?

 

The team was good defensively, but it was terrible offensively. And that was because after Brian Sipe fled following the 1983 season for the big money of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, owned by some guy named Donald Trump, the Browns replaced him with Paul McDonald.

 

Bad idea.

 

It was like trying to replace George Clooney as the leading man in a movie with George Costanza.

 

McDonald was awful, causing the team overall to be awful.

 

So in the offseason, then General Manager Ernie Accorsi, who was working in public relations with the Baltimore Colts when they had some quarterback named John Unitas, and who would later make sure as GM of the New York Giants that they landed Eli Manning, jumped through hoops to get Kosar to Cleveland. With Accorsi deftly pulling all the right strings at all the right times, the Browns out-maneuvered their division rivals, the Houston Oilers, to work a blockbuster trade with the Buffalo Bills to get the No. 1 overall pick in the 1985 NFL Supplemental Draft, which they used to take Kosar.

 

To be sure, it came with a steep price, for the Browns had to give to Buffalo the top half of both their 1985 and ’86 college drafts. But it was well worth it, for the arrival of Kosar completely transformed the Browns, who, with him leading the way, becoming one of the best quarterbacks in their history, made it to the playoffs the next five seasons, winning four Central titles and getting to the AFC Championship Game three times. And twice they came within a whisker of earning the franchise’s first Super Bowl trip.

 

Without Kosar, none of this would have happened. None of it!

 

Accorsi knew the 1985 Browns had holes, but he also understood – much more fully so – that the Browns had no chance to go anywhere of significance until they landed their franchise quarterback. Accorsi was certain that Kosar was that guy, which is why he staked his reputation on that trade with the Bills.

 

And he was right.

 

There’s no doubt that the 2016 Browns have a lot more holes than did the 1985 club, so not even the addition of a quarterback of Kosar’s caliber is going to immediately turn this team around. However, the Browns can fill all of those other holes until they’re blue in the face, but they aren’t going to have the opportunity to get headed in the right direction until they get that big-time quarterback.

 

So here’s hoping and praying that the Browns dig in their heels, keep that No. 2 pick and draft a quarterback. I don’t care who it is as long as it’s someone they are convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt will be the guy for whom they’ve looked for so long.

 

Then – and only then – will the Browns have a chance to start improving.

 

And with that, then – and only then – will all those rumors reserved for the top of the draft begin encircling teams other than the one in Cleveland.

 

Rumors are fun, but too much of a good thing is too much.

 

And the Browns reached that point a long, long time ago.