Quite a news day in Berea, with dual shockers.

First, Chud named third-stringer Brian Hoyer as Sunday’s starting QB, as the local kid leapfrogs Jason Campbell to replace injured Brandon Weeden. Hoyer, like Chud, is a Jesuit-educated longtime Browns fan. Of course, that’s not the reason for his elevation from inactive to first-string. It’s that Campbell, a former first-rounder, has already hit his ceiling, and we don’t know whether Hoyer has.

Chud said all three QBs are about even, and he didn’t commit to sending Weeden back out there when his thumb permits. So again, it’s a season of evaluation and setting things up for the future. The obvious takeaway is that the Browns know they still need a premier quarterback. Weeden, the 2012 first-rounder they inherited from the previous regime, just ain’t it.

And then, late in the afternoon, an even bigger story broke. The Browns traded Trent Richardson to get the Colts’ first-rounder next spring.

Richardson, the third pick overall in 2012, was really the only credible running back on the roster, as the Browns lost two expected contributors to injury in training camp. If 31-year-old Willis McGahee passes his physical, he’ll go from street free agent to starter. Before McGahee’s solid pro career, he starred in the Miami Hurricane offense coordinated by none other than Rob Chudzinski.

This bombshell trade gives the Browns much more ammo to remake the roster next year and nab that franchise QB. They’ll have extra picks in three of the first four rounds.

But as for 2013, the sentiment on the street is that the Browns have sacrificed the season for the sake of a long-term rebuild. It’s hard to dispute that notion. If I’d paid for season tickets or shelled out for a Richardson jersey, I’d be upset.

The real risk here, to my mind, is that Browns fans root for losses to improve their draft standing, and that a team in limbo goes limp. The early conventional wisdom seems to foretell just this scenario.

For the organization — just two games into a long season — to allow a plausible impression that winning the very next game is not its foremost concern … well, it’s sacrilege, the very opposite of the idea of pro football as the stark, uncompromising embodiment of a sporting spectacle bravely met and hotly contested.

To even raise the question of whether a Browns loss might be a better outcome in the long run is fundamentally flawed.

That, my friends, is why Chud will need to earn his $3 million. He hasn’t been set up for success this season. But in the face of another fall foreboding woe and ignominy, just watch how he handles it and how his team responds. Watch who steps up and leads. See if they coalesce and find any consistency as a team. Will they play to win aggressively or, like previous incarnations, act as if they just want to hang in there, keep it respectable, not lose too desperately, and then ultimately fail at all of that?

I’ll still be rooting for the Browns to win every game, even if the playoffs are out of reach. I’ll be watching for signs of progress, for which players show true mettle, for the love of the game and of the team as an idea, even if that idea survives mostly as a vestige of childhood, a team now represented by a head coach I sat through high school with and who today has an even bigger-time, manlier-sized piece of work on his shoulders.