The shift in Baker Mayfield going No. 1 overall, at least to the public's perception, happened at the last minute, with Mayfield's name surfacing in the days and hours leading up to the draft. Vegas shifted drastically at the last minute and the Oklahoma quarterback eventually went No. 1 overall. 

As it turns out, the Browns were honed in on the Heisman Trophy winner for a much longer time. As Peter King of TheMMQB.com reveals in his draft-week article on the Browns, Cleveland had Mayfield No. 1 on its board essentially the entire draft process. 

Per King, GM John Dorsey tasked his top lieutenants -- assistant GM Eliot Wolfe and consultant Scot McCloughan, formerly of the Redskins -- with grading and ranking the top four quarterbacks: Mayfield, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen and Sam Darnold. The idea was to get an independent grade from all three men to avoid any unconscious bias in the evaluation. 

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All three of them ranked Mayfield first, and Dorsey/Wolfe -- who both hail from the Packers organization -- had the exact same grade on Mayfield: 8.5 out of 9, an extremely high scouting grade. Even more interesting is that Wolfe used his report from when he was in Green Bay, last fall. So it's not like he was desperate to talk anyone into Mayfield; the Packers had Aaron Rodgers. 

From King's story:

When the GM compared the three reports he noted not only that all three men rated Mayfield first, but also this: Wolf's grade was identical to Dorsey's 8.5 on the 1.0-to-9.0 scouting scale they'd learned with the Packers. (Dorsey retained the grading system with the Chiefs and now in Cleveland.) An 8.5 is worthy of a top 10 pick in any draft. "Keep in mind," Wolf says, "I had no horse in the race. I was in Green Bay. We weren't taking a quarterback in the first round. But to me, Mayfield was clearly the best guy." McCloughan graded on a different scale, where the lower the number the better, and he gave Mayfield a 1.1. That, in Packers parlance, is roughly an 8.5.

In other words, it wasn't hard for the trio to get on the same page. The reports, the analytics and the eye test all matched up: Mayfield was the guy. 

Dorsey later set up a visit to see all the quarterbacks with coach Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley, among others. This is where the now-famous "hee-hee" moment with Mayfield and his teammates occurred that Jackson would later recall. 

They went through all the rigamarole of a prospect meeting, sitting down with each quarterback and, in Mayfield's case, talking to him about his off-field issues, reaching out to different contacts in Norman (read the full story for all those details; it's excellently done) and having a physical workout with Mayfield. 

Jackson was blown away by Mayfield on the field, but Dorsey was just blown away, period. He told King as he left Norman in Jimmy Haslam's private plane, he knew that Mayfield was "our dude."

Afterward, the Cleveland contingent boarded owner Jimmy Haslam's plane in Norman and went to scout Allen. "I didn't say anything to anyone," Dorsey says. "But when I got on the plane, I knew: That's our dude."

Dorsey has publicly said prior to this that he viewed Mayfield as his guy after that workout.

The Browns deserve full credit for not letting any of this really leak until the day of the draft. The day of, there was a video of Dorsey playing to fans in Dallas that said the Browns will "awaken the sleeping giant." It was fait acompli that Cleveland would take Sam Darnold, hope he worked out and then focus on the No. 4 pick.

Instead they went Mayfield. It's a bold move and it was surprising at the time, but it was a well thought out plan by the men in the front office, three men who have a long history of successful drafts. 

If this is the moment the Browns turn things around, that day Dorsey stepped on the plane will go down as a pivotal point.