Traveling music for The Third, Pryor

Right now, Brock Osweiler is on the Browns’ player roster and Robert Griffin III is not. Couldn’t have said that 48 hours ago.

Osweiler is the only quarterback on the Cleveland roster who owns more than one season of experience in the National Football League following the release Friday of Griffin.

Don’t exactly know that means since the front office decided Thursday to spend $16 million (what Osweiler is scheduled to make this season) for what amounted to a second-round pick in next year’s college draft.

Rumors persist the 6-8 Osweiler will not be on the roster when the Browns kick off the new season in September, all of which ratchets up speculation about the Jimmy Garoppolo trade scenario.

The Patriots maintain Garoppolo is going nowhere. But it’s hard to believe the front office won’t make a preemptive strike for another veteran free-agent quarterback just in case the Pats, who maintain Garoppolo won’t be traded, make believers out of some of the disbelievers in Cleveland.

Currently available are the likes of Jay Cutler, Colin Kaepernick, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Nick Foles, Christian Ponder, Blaine Gabbert and Geno Smith. One of them could easily come in and keep the starter’s seat warm for a year before the Browns dip into the strong quarterback pool in the 2018 lottery.

Cutler and Fitzpatrick, both 34, would be the likeliest candidates to fill such a role. Both have experienced success in the league and could step right in and give the Browns respectable quarterbacking.

The Third’s departure, meanwhile, means owner Jimmy Haslam III is now the only Third who calls Berea his working home.

The football-playing Third was let go rather than collect a $750,000 roster bonus due Saturday, bringing to a close a sad and all-too-brief chapter in the litany of quarterback failures since the Browns returned to the NFL in 1999.

The Third is merely one of 26 quarterbacks who have tried – and failed – to move this team into the realm of respectability.

His career in Cleveland started out with a broken shoulder in the season opener, continued with 10 games of healing and concluded with four games that showed he was not nearly the player who was good enough to be one of the league’s rookies of the year in 2012.

He threw two touchdown passes, both in the season finale loss to Pittsburgh, and three interceptions, while compiling only 887 yards through the air. He was clearly a shell of the player who took the NFL by storm with Washington as a rookie.

Speaking of Washington, Terrelle Pryor signed a one-year contract worth $8 million (with incentives) with the Redskins Friday, the same day the Browns officially signed Kenny Britt to a four-year deal.

In doing so, the former Ohio State quarterback never gave the Browns a chance to at least match the Redskins’ offer. So much for his public utterances of wanting to remain with the Browns “as long as (coach) Hue Jackson is here.” Well, Jackson isn’t going anywhere and Pryor is headed elsewhere.

Pryor, who sought and failed to get a long-term deal with the Browns and other interested teams, seemed to settle on the one-year Washington offer in hopes of bettering his breakout season in 2016 with the Browns and landing a big-money multi-year deal.

The big upside for his career is he now will be catching passes from Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins, who threw for more than 4,900 yards last season and is far superior to any quarterback on the current Cleveland roster, and figures to be the club’s No. 1 wideout.

Pierre Garcon and DeSean Jackson, 1,000-yard receivers with the Redskins last season, left in free agency earlier this week, Garcon heading for San Francisco and Jackson landing in Tampa Bay.

That leaves the door wide open for Pryor, who will join an offense that averaged 37½ passes a game last season, one that put the ball in the air on two of every three plays. He should flourish.