AP

Hue Jackson was coaching the Raiders in 2011, but he would later benefit significantly from events that would happen in Cincinnati.

The Bengals had the fourth pick in the draft. They opted for receiver A.J. Green instead of a quarterback. Four picks later, the Titans took Jake Locker (leaving J.J. Watt on the board). Two picks later, the Jaguars took Blaine Gabbert (leaving Watt on the board). Two picks later, the Vikings took Christian Ponder (the fact that Watt was gone by then makes it a little better, but not much).

Then, in round two, the Bengals selected Andy Dalton.

Jackson, fired by the Raiders despite leading the team to a rare non-losing season since Super Bowl XXXVII, landed in Cincinnati and rebuilt his career thanks in large part to the presence of Green and Dalton. While Jackson didn’t specifically mention this dynamic during extended remarks on Thursday when meeting with the media in connection with the team’s voluntary minicamp, the notion that the supposedly “best” quarterbacks in the draft class may not end up being the “best” quarterbacks moving forward permeated Jackson’s remarks.

“Everybody keeps talking about two of the best quarterbacks in the draft,” Jackson said, via quotes distributed by the team. “No one knows that, right? No one really knows that. We will see how it all unfolds here in two or three years and see if we were right or wrong, but I feel very good about where we are and what we are doing.”

The fact that Jackson currently doesn’t feel strongly enough about Carson Wentz or Jared Goff to stay put at No. 2, standing alone, shows that the Browns did the right thing by trading down. Even if the guy who ends up going No. 2 to the Eagles becomes a star, if the Browns don’t believe strongly enough that they’re getting a franchise quarterback with that second pick, proceeding in that manner would have contributed to yet another first-round quarterback disaster for the Browns.

So they can still get a quarterback at No. 8. Or they can trade down deeper into the first round and get one. Or they can do what the Bengals did five years ago and wait until the top of round two. And if whoever they get later in the draft ends up being as good or better than Wentz or Goff, the Browns will be hearing the sound of something that has become unfamiliar to them in recent years: Applause.