Browns still searching for franchise quarterback

CLEVELAND

Finding Bigfoot has been more productive than the Cleveland Browns’ search for a franchise quarterback.

This flawed football quest drags on.

For nearly two decades, the Browns, once a standard of NFL excellence and now a league punching bag, have been running in circles as they try to find a quarterback to lead them from the darkness to relevance and respectability.

Since the franchise’s inglorious expansion return in 1999, they’ve started 26 quarterbacks, a roll call of names that haunt even the most loyal Cleveland fans holding out hope the team will one day get it right.

From Tim Couch to Trent Dilfer, from Derek Anderson to Cody Kessler, and let’s not forget that year of fun with Johnny Manziel, QBs have cycled through Cleveland like tourists, with none sticking around for long. It’s been a running joke.

And until the Browns find that long-term answer at quarterback, they’ll continue to be looked at as a laughingstock.

They’ll have another chance to perhaps end this long pursuit in this week’s NFL draft. With the No. 1 and No. 12 overall picks, and four more selections in the first three rounds, the Browns are positioned to finally fix the most important position on the field.

This could be the year Cleveland fans have longed for, the one when the Browns find their Tom Brady or Ben Roethlisberger. But as fate would have it, this year’s QB class isn’t highly regarded.

Many draft experts feel there isn’t a quarterback worth a first-round selection and that Cleveland should wait until 2018.

That’s just so Browns, whose experiment with Robert Griffin III backfired last season,