CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns owner Jimmy Haslam stressed Thursday night that the Browns are on a mission to find a championship-caliber quarterback and that they have no idea if Johnny Manziel can be their man.

"Everyone knows this, you can look at the teams whether they're in the final eight, the final four or the final two, you've got to have a really good quarterback,'' Haslam said at the 15th annual Great Cleveland Sports Awards at the Renaissance Hotel. "And our situation as Coach (Mike) Pettine says is still muddy and we don't know who our quarterback is going to be next year and what I would say to our fans is, we're going to continue to work really hard to find that quarterback who can make us a championship team."

The owners of the three major sports franchises in Cleveland, Paul Dolan with the Cleveland Indains, Jimmy Haslam with the Cleveland Browns and Dan Gilbert with the Cleveland Cavaliers talk with Former NFL running back, Eddie George, as he hosted the 15th annual Greater Cleveland Sports Awards, January 22, 2015 at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland.

Haslam, who spent about 10 minutes chatting with Ohio State national-championship winning quarterback Cardale Jones in the media room, re-iterated what new offensive coordinator John DeFilippo and Pettine said at DeFilippo's introductory press conference Thursday: they don't know if their starter is in the building.

"I think Pett said it well and I think Flip said it well today, we don't know yet,'' said Haslam. "We're going to work until we find the right person, and I'm not slighting Connor (Shaw) or Johnny, we have two quarterbacks, or Brian (Hoyer), if he were to come back, I'm not slighting any of them. We're going to work hard until we get a quarterback who can help us win and win consistently, which we've stated since Day 1 is our goal. And it's not easy, but we understand it's the mission and we're going to work hard at it.''

Haslam echoed general manager's Ray Farmer's postseason comments that a first-round quarterback is on the table for the second year in a row.

"Yeah...we've got to get a quarterback and we've got to get it fixed,'' said Haslam. "Now that's not to say Connor, who in the last game played really well, hadn't worked with the first team any against a really good team on the road, played well and that's not to say Johnny can't do it but they both have to prove it that they can do it over a period of time.''

As for Hoyer, he said, "I think every option is open on the table for us in terms of who's going to play next year.

Cardale Jones and Jimmy Haslam at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards

Haslam stressed that the Browns need to see growth on the part of Manziel if he's going to be their franchise quarterback.

"Johnny has to show on and off the field he can be a professional,'' Haslam said. "He knows that. Everybody in the organization has told him that. It'll be up to Flip and Pett to decide whether he can be the kind of quarterback we need him to be. He knows what we expect of him on and off the field and it's up to him to prove he can do that.''

As far as negotiating with Hoyer, who's set to become a free agent in March, Haslam said, "That will up to Ray and Pett to decide what direction we go there.''

DeFilippo said he plans to meet with Hoyer this week, and the Browns will likely meet with his agent over the next few weeks. Farmer said in his postseason press conference that the ball will be in Hoyer's court as far as whether or not he wants to return.

Haslam addressed a number of other topics in his five-minute interview:

* On the Browns being investigated for a report that a personnel member texted from the press level to the sidelines: "I know that Ray and Pett and Sasha Brown, our general counselor, are cooperating fully with the NFL and if we did anything wrong I'm sure we'll correct it and make whatever amends. I know we've cooperated fully with the NFL."

* On the disappointing finish: "If you evaluate our season, if you said at the first of the year that we were going to be 7-9, what would everybody have said? A pretty good year, right? But the reality is we were 7-4 at one time and so now it looks really bad. We don't have enough depth and the injuries are part of the NFL and everybody has them. The injuries hit a team like us hard and it's one of the reasons why we faltered down the stretch. (He added that a championship-caliber QB is a must).

* On Shanahan leaving: "I'm not going to talk about Kyle any. Kyle's a smart guy and he has a great future in coaching and we had a good relationship. I will say this, despite the outside view and I think Ray took the high road, which our organization's always going to do, we work together extremely well. Ray and Pett and Sash and (team president) Alec (Scheiner) and I are going off for three days to do a little strategic planning session and I assure you we'll work very hard, we'll work very close together. Do we have disagreements? Of course. But I would venture to say that wherever you all work there's disagreements every day, too. We work together extremely well.''

* On DeFilippo: "We're really excited about Defilippo and John wants to be here and John's the kind of guy that welcomes a challenge and looks at our quarterback situation, understands where he is and looks at our schedule next year and understands where he is and looks forward to the challenge. That's the kind of person we want to be part of our organization.

"I think it's also important to remember we've only been together this group, the five of us, for a little bit less than a year. and it takes time to build the team and we're learning each other, we're learning how to work together with each other and I think we've got a really good group that we're really excited about. we're going to be together Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and I'm personally really looking forward to that session.''