Editor's note: Tony Grossi covers the Cleveland Browns for ESPN 850 WKNR.

Fasten your seat belts. The ride is on.

This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for -- a young team on the rise with the franchise quarterback in the driver’s seat.

The train is about to leave the station. It will go where Baker Mayfield takes it.

There will be ups and downs, exhilaration and heartbreak. One thing is for sure. The days of dysfunction and melodrama and national ridicule are over.

The Browns have a quarterback, and that means they are relevant again.

“We have been the brunt of jokes, the brunt of everything,” coach Hue Jackson said after Mayfield’s coming-out party in electrified FirstEnergy Stadium on Thursday night. “I get it, and we have owned that. We deserve that, but hopefully, maybe people will start seeing that things are going to change here and that we are working at it.”

The national TV audience for the Browns’ 21-17 victory over the New York Jets drew 8.6 million viewers, making it the highest-rated and most-watched Thursday night game since December of 2015.

According to ESPN’s Darren Rovell, Mayfield sold more jerseys from halftime until midnight Friday than Khalil Mack and Tom Brady did for the entire day. On Twitter, Mayfield had five times more mentions Thursday night than LeBron James and Conor McGregor.

Rovell reported Mayfield sold more jerseys in 14 hours than Johnny Manziel did on the day he was drafted and the day after.

About those Manziel pre-draft comparisons: Can we expunge those from the record?

Mea culpa: On the night John Dorsey made Mayfield the first overall pick of the 2018 draft, I wrote:

Are you kidding me? This is the reason the Browns passed on Carson Wentz in 2016, passed on Deshaun Watson in 2017, and failed to aggressively trade for Jimmy Garoppolo? To crown six-foot Baker Mayfield the next franchise quarterback hopeful with the No. 1 pick of the John Dorsey era?

After sacrificing so many blue-chip prospects to collect future assets, the road paved by so many miserable game days was supposed to lead to a pot of gold in the 2018 draft. Instead, there was Mayfield at the end of the rainbow – another diminutive quarterback with a giant chip on his shoulder.

After only one-half of football with Mayfield in his element, which is to say in charge of the offensive team, I am glad to report I was wrong.

I saw things Thursday night that I haven’t seen since Bernie Kosar was commanding the Browns.

I saw quick decisions, quick throws, leadership, energy emitted to every facet of the team. I saw a quarterback seize the moment, and electrify a team and stadium and city. I saw a fatigued defense at halftime draw new energy from its quarterback. I saw a special teams unit suddenly make positive plays.

The cliché that “quarterbacks get too much of the credit and too much of the blame” is really not correct. Only quarterbacks can affect and inspire every position on the team to play better.

In training camp, I talked to Drew Stanton about Mayfield. Stanton was brought to the Browns by Dorsey to mentor Mayfield. Stanton was in the Detroit Lions quarterback room when Matthew Stafford was drafted No. 1 overall and he was in the Indianapolis Colts quarterback room when Andrew Luck was drafted No. 1 overall. If anyone knows a special quarterback when he sees one, it is Stanton.

“I think there’s definitely overriding traits they all have,” Stanton said. “I think [Mayfield] is one of those guys that just has a good feel for the game. Andrew and Matthew were both extremely intelligent football IQ. Were very underrated athletes, as well. I joke to [Mayfield] and tell him he ran slower than me at the combine. But he plays fast.

“I think the most important thing for me when I look at a quarterback in this league is if he makes all 10 other guys in the huddle better when he steps into it. And if he does that, he’s doing his job. I think Baker has that innate quality.

“You already see some of those natural leadership skills. When he yells at a guy, it’s not that he’s trying to embarrass a guy, it’s a teaching moment. All those things necessary to build that trust and respect among teammates, he has that.”

Stanton spoke those words before Mayfield had a chance to play. And then Mayfield stepped on that big stage on Thursday night and cleaned up a 14-0 deficit and refused to let Sam Darnold beat the Browns, as had Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson done in previous years.

The worm has turned: Mayfield’s first two passes were lightning bolts hurled by a miniature Zeus. They lit up the stadium, the franchise, the city.

When Antonio Callaway and Jarvis Landry failed to hang on to passes on what proved to be the winning drive, Mayfield never flinched. He completed a 15-play, 75-yard march to victory.

In effect, that drive announced to the team and to the league that the Browns have found their leader.

When you are in such a rut as the Browns, there is always talk of needing to change the culture of losing. Alas, it only happens when a quarterback steps on the field and changes the culture by doing things that those preceding him failed to do.

On Thursday night, Baker Mayfield changed the culture of the Browns and set the franchise on a new course.

And now we enjoy the ride.