NFL Draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. was on the radio Saturday morning saying, no doubt to the surprise of almost everyone listening, that he has dropped Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch out of the first round of his mock draft.

It wasn’t long ago that Lynch, along with fellow quarterbacks Jared Goff of Cal and Carson Wentz of tiny North Dakota State, were all at the top of every draft board, including that of Kiper.

Whoa! What happened?

“Lynch is more of a thrower than a pitcher,” Kiper explained.

OK. So Lynch, at least according to Kiper, is not a passer. Whether that is actually the case will be determined somewhere down the road.

But for the here and now and for the purpose of this piece, especially as it relates to the quarterback-starved Browns, let’s assume that Kiper is right and that Cleveland’s deep thinkers, including head coach Hue Jackson, Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown and Vice President of Player Personnel Andrew Berry, agree wholeheartedly with him.

Let’s also assume that the Browns are set at taking the best available quarterback of the two with their pick at No. 2 overall. That may well be the case. The Browns can draft players at all kinds of different positions, but until they get their franchise guy at quarterback, the most important position in team sports, they have absolutely no chance of becoming a consistent contender.

And finally, let’s assume that the team with the No. 1 pick, the Tennessee Titans, keep the choice and, not needing a quarterback with the fact they already have Marcus Mariota, take a player at another position or trade the selection to a team that also doesn’t need a quarterback and wouldn’t draft one. That would leave both Goff and Wentz on the board when the Browns are on the clock.

So, then, who would the Browns take?

It is the $64,000 question for today, Feb. 21, and it will likely still be the $64,000 question when the draft rolls around in about 9½ weeks.

Both players are big physically. Wentz is 6-foot-5 and 233 pounds, while Goff is 6-4 and 210 pounds. For the sake of conversation, Lynch is bigger that both at them at 6-7 and 245. When Jackson met Lynch during Super Bowl week, he said “he looks like Man Mountain Dean standing up there.” Yeah, guess so.

So, even if Lynch is still in the conversation, the Browns are going to get a big-sized quarterback, which is smart in a division as physically tough defensively as the AFC North. Jackson knows that well after scheming against those defenses when he was the offensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals the last two seasons, and as an offensive assistant for two years before that.

Think of the Bengals’ Andy Dalton (6-2, 220) , the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger (6-5, 241) and the Baltimore Ravens’ Joe Flacco (6-6, 245).

But Wentz is not big-time when it comes to the competition he faced at North Dakoka State, particularly in relation to the fact Goff played in the PAC-12. With the parity in college football today, does that matter? And if it does matter, then how much does it matter? Again in terms of the AFC North, keep in mind that Roethlisberger played at Miami (Ohio) and Flacco at Delaware, and they turned out pretty well.

There’s a lot there for the Browns to have to get right before the draft, with a good deal of the information they will glean coming this week during the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.

And they have to get it right, or this regime, even with all the hopefulness many Browns fans have for it because of its wealth of offensive and quarterback coaching experience, will fail miserably just like all the others in the expansion era.