Frequently what appears to be an ambassador of good news for Browns fans turns out to be a thief wrapped in a shiny cloak of inevitable misfortune. Maybe the opposite can sometimes occur too, and a silver lining can be found in something ostensibly devastating.

Whether a supporter of the trade to acquire Deshaun Watson originally or not, no one could have been satisfied with the quarterback play in Cleveland this season. Let’s not celebrate injuries, but we might be able to find a glimmer of hope in what happened Sunday vs. the Bengals.

Shortly before halftime on a second-and-6, Watson went down in a heap like a basket of dirty clothes being dumped onto the laundry room floor. This happened on a play without contact to the Browns QB by anyone else.

Slow motion replay showed the telltale ripple along the back of a right calf that left his foot appearing to be partially disconnected from the rest of his leg in movements that followed — a sequence which trumpets an Achilles tear to anyone who’s ever watched one before. The injury was confirmed as such on Monday.

It’s well documented that the Browns’ Achilles heel has been quarterback play, with 38 different generals manning the position to start games since the team’s return to the NFL in 1999. Dorian Thompson-Robinson was added to that list last season, and he was the first one in after Watson’s exit Sunday.

Any person who thought Thompson-Robinson would be a starting NFL quarterback is probably disappointed. But for anyone who was hoping that the Browns would draft a QB in 2025, those wishes now have rocket boosters.

DTR may develop into a career backup — a notion that may have appeared to be gaining traction by the fact that he was installed as QB2 ahead of a healthy Jameis Winston this past week. But what we saw from Thompson-Robinson Sunday evinced him more as a threat to run than someone defenses should be worried about throwing the football.

Winston, the team’s 49th “active” player as the emergency quarterback, was eligible to enter the game only if both QBs in front of him weren’t able to play. This happenstance arose in the fourth quarter after a finger injury on DTR’s throwing hand followed his second interception in two quarters of play, apparently during a tackle he made on the return.

While nobody played well enough behind center to brag about to an ex-girlfriend, the Browns did get in the endzone on drives from every QB on the team who doesn’t have a $230 million contract. What we saw from them will not be good enough to win many games moving forward, but there is reason to be hopeful.

We’ll dive into that in Part 2 right now.

—@PoisonPill4