‘Seems like Watson has the leg up’ on QB battle

The Browns have been alternating their QB1 on a daily basis in camp, giving both Watson and Shedeur Sanders a chance to work with the first-team offense during this summer’s camp battle. While Saturday would have been Sanders’ day to work with the ones, Watson instead worked exclusively with the first-team offense for a second straight day. A team spokesperson said after the practice that this decision was based on head coach Todd Monken wanting to see Watson with certain personnel groupings, but The Athletic’s Zac Jackson believes this could be “the first strong sign that Monken views Watson as the clear leader” in the camp battle. Watson has also reportedly strung together three straight solid days of camp after getting off to an underwhelming start. It was reported earlier that the team plans to alternate preseason starters, so we would assume this camp battle has a few weeks left to go before a QB1 is named for Week 1’s game against the Jaguars.

Wolfe said Browns head coach Todd Monken told him the team will start “one quarterback the first preseason game, the other one will start the second one, and most likely the leader of the competition is going to start the third.” It sounds like Monken is planning to give both Watson and Sanders a chance to compete and build chemistry in camp and preseason before determining a leader in the quarterback race. The Browns’ quarterback room is one of the few truly dead-even quarterback competitions occurring in camp and fantasy managers can stay tuned to preseason play to assess if Watson or Sanders has the edge to start Week 1.

It’s hard to put too much stock into practice stats, but if there’s one thing coaching staffs won’t tolerate from the quarterback position it’s turnovers. “It’s multiple -- they’re doing all types of different stuff, showing us different things,” Watson said of Cleveland’s defense. Watson and Shedeur Sanders remain in competition for the No. 1 quarterback job at this point, though it certainly seems like Sanders (who has been picked once per Oyefusi) is off to a better start.

Head coach Todd Monken said the Browns will “divide the reps up according to the depth chart.” Based on the practice reps to open up training camp, Sanders and Watson are competing for the starting job while Dillon Gabriel and Taylen Green are competing for depth. Both Sanders and Watson have had disappointing showings in their most recent regular season performances and neither has yet to pull ahead of the other in this quarterback competition. Opening training camp with a quarterback battle, Monken will be alternating Sanders and Watson with the starting offense to see how the competition shakes out.

Watson’s last live snap was in October 2024. This mostly seems to be a point about how Watson will play a lot in the preseason even if Shedeur Sanders grabs the lead in the QB1 derby. The bread crumbs in the article tend towards Watson, noting “Monken called run/pass option plays and even the occasional designed keeper for Watson, the coach has stressed that he believes Sanders can operate a similar offense” while adding that Watson’s best chance to win the job lies in “his athleticism and ability to both extend and freelance plays.” It remains hard to trust whoever is named the starter here will keep the job for more than a month or two.

Early in the offseason, it looked like the Browns were more than comfortable rolling Watson out as their Week 1 starter. Then they saw Watson practice. Reports from OTAs and minicamp were not kind to Watson, though Sanders didn’t earn great reviews either. After getting a better look at both players, it sounds like new head coach Todd Monken truly doesn’t know who will take the first snap this year. By virtue of not being Deshaun Watson, Sanders has forced a legitimate training camp competition, though we doubt much fantasy value comes from the situation, regardless of who wins the job.

Florio’s discoveries come after he was asked, “How much cap space did the Browns save due to the insurance policy on Deshaun Watson for him missing the entire 2025 season?” After what appears to be an exhaustive amount of work to come up with a ballpark figure, Florio reports the “total in cap credit for 2024 through 2029" was just over $88 million, a total that is derived from reported cap credits the Browns have received or will receive that range from $4.951 million to $8.79 million. These were reflected in records obtained from the NFLPA, which showed in multiple locations in Watson’s contract a “return of [signing bonus] from insurance policy,” per Florio. Watson is in the final year of a record-setting five-year, $230 million fully-guaranteed contract that has come up well short of expectations for the Browns thus far. While the team is still ultimately on the hook for paying Watson, $88 million in refunds for the games Watson missed due to injury may have dulled some of the pain of those expenses for the Haslam family.

The consensus among Cleveland beat writers was that neither Watson nor Shedeur Sanders shined during the team’s OTA practices. “Watson seems healthy and occasionally threw downfield with confidence,” Jackson said, “but he lacked consistency and too often threw into traffic.” Sanders, meanwhile, “seemed to be a more confident and accurate passer later in the spring than he was early on.” Browns head coach Todd Monken said he would have liked to name a starter headed into training camp next month but neither quarterback stepped up in June. “Whether Sanders can win the job this summer remains to be seen,” Jackson said. Neither Browns QB would likely be a viable option in one-QB leagues this season.

The Deshaun Watson experiment hasn’t gone as the Browns hoped when they traded for him in 2022 and signed him to a record-setting four-year, $230 million contract. Watson’s performance on the field has been underwhelming, and the torn Achilles he suffered in 2024 kept him on the sidelines for all of 2025. Despite this, the 30-year-old signal-caller is in the midst of a battle with Shedeur Sanders for the Browns’ QB1 job this season, and Berry sounds open to the possibility of Watson not only playing for the team in 2026 but also in the future. Berry didn’t rule out Watson signing a new deal with the team after this year and said, “I think you have to be open-minded and flexible” when it comes to the quarterback position. It’s hard to imagine Watson remaining with the Browns beyond this season, given how things have gone so far, but for an organization that has started over 40 different QBs since 2000, it would seem that all options truly could be on the table. Regardless of who wins the Browns’ QB1 job to start the year, we would expect to see both Watson and Sanders at some point.

Monken noted that this is easy to say now, because the team is not practicing in pads. That said, Monken opined that “it feels like he’s making quicker decisions” and that the ball is coming out of his hands faster, which he has to continue doing on game days. Monken adds that Sanders possesses playmaking ability, but he needs to “eliminate lost-yards plays.” It sounds like Sanders’ to-do list is fairly straightforward. The battle between him and QB Deshaun Watson continues.