BEREA, Ohio -- Hue Jackson still believes DeShone Kizer can be his quarterback of the future, but admitted the Browns might have to draft a quarterback with their top pick anyway.

If the draft were tomorrow, the Browns would have the No. 1 overall pick and the No. 7 from their trade down in 2017 with the Texans.

It means that in this rich QB class, they'll likely have their pick of UCLA's Josh Rosen, USC's Sam Darnold, Louisville's Lamar Jackson, Wyoming's Josh Allen and Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield -- depending on who comes out.

"It's not a good problem because that means you're losing, but it's a problem that in this situation, you want to have,'' Jackson said a day after the Browns lost 19-10 to the Chargers to fall to 0-12. "We can't have too many good quarterbacks right now on this football team.

"We have to and we've said it before, use resources at that position and go get the right guy that we feel comfortable with to pair them with some of the players we have here to come up with the best quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. That is just what you do."

At the same time, Jackson still believes in Kizer, who's shown flashes of franchise ability this season but is struggling with accuracy and turnovers.



"I'm not changing from that,'' said Jackson. "Yes, I do. This experience for him is invaluable. He's getting real-time game reps in the National Football League against some really good defenses that have shown him where he has to improve.

"We all know players make huge improvements from Year 1 to Year 2 because all of a sudden, you understand the speed of the game, what it takes to win, how you prepare - everything with a National Football League quarterback to go through it as a rookie.''

Players such as 2016 No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff have made stunning turnarounds from their rookie years. Last season, Goff went 0-7, completed 54.6% of his passes, threw only 5 TD passes against 7 interceptions, and finished with a 63.6 rating. This year, he's 9-3, completing 62.2 percent of his passes, has thrown 20 TDs against only 6 INTs, and is ninth in the NFL with a 98.4 rating.

"I'm not trying to compare DeShone to anybody or anybody I've ever had or anybody I know, but I just know quarterbacks from Year 1 to Year 2 make huge jumps,'' said Jackson. "There have been some this year that have done that. I'm not saying that he'll have that kind of a jump a year from now, but I'd be surprised if he's not remarkably better a year from now from this experience."

Goff's turnaround hasn't been lost on Kizer, who's taking the losing hard.

"(It's) not necessarily solace but it's obvious now after spending as much time as I've spent as a starter here to see how much the game can slow down and you start learning the different tools that you can have within the offense that you run,'' he said. "Everything comes with time and this situation we're in this year, obviously I didn't have a bunch of time to get to where I wanted to be at this point right now and our record shows it.

"But I do believe that the more that I spend with this team, the more that I spend in this system, the more games I get to play in, the better I'm going to become and the better I'll be able to help the guys around me play at a higher level.''

Kizer is not only 0-11 this season, but last in the NFL -- by far -- with a 58.1 rating, unacceptable by NFL starting standards. He's also one of only of three current NFL starters with a completion percentage in the 50s (52.5%), and struggled with that in LA, where he completed only 46.8%.

What's more, he's thrown a league-high 15 interceptions and lost five fumbles -- including one on a Joey Rosa strip-sack with 4:48 left in the Chargers game -- accounting for 20 of the Browns' 30 giveaways for 66.6%. His 20 giveaways are more than 25 NFL teams.

He's got only four chances to prove to the Browns he can be their franchise QB, but it's almost a foregone conclusion now that they'll have to spend that top pick on a QB -- especially considering that they passed on Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson in each of the past two drafted. With this QB class heralded as one of the best in decades, the Browns will be hard-pressed not to whiff again on a potential superstar.



Related: Gordon on his return vs. Chargers: 'I feel free when I'm out there'

But that doesn't mean Jackson is ready to give up on Kizer, the No. 52 overall pick whom he's invested so much time in this season.



"DeShone has improved,'' said Jackson. "He obviously has from the beginning of the year until now. Obviously, some of the things that we've talked about earlier in the year reared its ugly head yesterday late in the game. There were some things that I thought early he did well, but as the game went on, there were some things that he needed to do better.''



Kizer's passes sailed on him at times as he struggled to connect with Josh Gordon, and he held the ball too long at other times. He also underthrew Gordon once and fired a couple of low and barely catchable balls, including one that went off Kenny Britt's hand. He also look for Gordon at times when he was tightly covered by Pro Bowl cornerback Casey Hayward. Some were broken one, and Hayward dropped one near-INT.

But in Kizer's defense, he hasn't had much of a receiving corps until now.



"DeShone is still a growing young quarterback,'' said Jackson. "He's working extremely hard. He's trying his tail off to win for his football team, and sometimes in those moments, you kind of revert back. You're going to take the good with the bad. He's done some good things. He did some things that he has to continue to grow and learn from. I am not down on DeShone.

"I want DeShone to keep working at this thing. He knows he has my backing and my support, but he knows there are some areas he has to grow and grow up pretty fast. He's taken that challenge.''

Kizer acknowledged that being in the same system next season "would be invaluable. If you go back and look at the guys who are doing it at the highest level from Peyton (Manning) to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, those guys have all been in the same system. They've been able to maximize their amount of time in this league because of that."