Veteran linebacker Anthony Walker will not be back for a 10th season in the NFL.
Walker announced his retirement on Thursday via a post on his Instagram account.
Walker played at Northwestern before being drafted by the Colts in the fifth round in 2017. He spent four seasons in Indianapolis and had 343 tackles, 3.5 sacks, three interceptions, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries during his time with the team.
The Browns signed Walker in 2021 and he spent three seasons in Cleveland. He had 170 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in that action.
Walker wrapped up his career by playing for the Dolphins and the Buccaneers over the last two seasons.
Todd Monken said this week that he has met with Deshaun Watson only once since the Browns hired him as head coach. Watson has spent his offseason training away from the team facility.
Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com reports that Watson has been working in South Florida since mid-February. Wide receiver Jerry Jeudy posted a photo on his Instagram story on Wednesday, showing him and Watson before a workout in the Sunshine State.
Watson has not played a game since October 2024 due to a twice-torn right Achilles tendon.
The team’s medical staff has fully cleared the quarterback for all football activities, and he is expected to return to Cleveland for the start of the Browns’ offseason program on Tuesday.
Watson, Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel will compete for the starting job.
The Browns will open their offseason program next week and one of the things to watch in the coming weeks will be how things are shaping up at quarterback.
Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are back for their second seasons with the club and Deshaun Watson is expected to be on the field after missing all of last season, but no one is being anointed as the starter at this point in the calendar. Head coach Todd Monken shed some light on how he will work toward making that decision when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday and one of the key takeaways was that everyone won’t be getting the same amount of work every day.
“I think there’s always competition irrespective of the number of reps a player gets,” Monken said, via the team’s website. “The number of reps a player gets doesn’t eliminate competition. It’s just in a given day, let’s say for instance, you want to see a quarterback with the first group, the second group, the third group. Well, are you going to divide those reps up evenly? Are you going to divide up the reps everywhere evenly? I don’t see it that way. That doesn’t mean there’s not competition. I just see it as in a given day, and it’ll be daily in terms of who gets what reps and when, because we certainly want to allocate our reps to the players we feel like are going to give us the best chance to win.”
That approach means they’ll be a lot of attention paid to snaps during offseason practices that are open to the media. There won’t be as many of those as there will be this summer and Monken sounds like he’d like to be closing in on a decision by the time camp opens.
“That doesn’t mean there’s still not competition,” Monken said. “But I do think you have to narrow the reps or at least balance up the reps of who you anticipate has to come out of the spring, certainly in a position to be a starter.”
Sanders, Gabriel and Watson may get some more company before Monken makes any calls about Week 1, so there’s still plenty to play out in the quarterback room in Cleveland.
Carson Beck and Ty Simpson are making some of the same stops as they make the pre-draft rounds of NFL teams.
NFL Media reports that Beck and Simpson are both slated for meetings with the Cardinals and Dolphins ahead of next month’s draft. Both quarterbacks have also spent time with the Jets already.
Simpson had a brief meeting with the Cardinals at the Combine as well and their head coach Mike LaFleur called him a “good dude and we’ll see where it goes.”
Beck has also met with the Steelers while Simpson has spent time with the Browns as he works to find a home in the NFL.
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is singing a different tune about quarterback Deshaun Watson this year.
While discussing the team’s decision to trade for Watson and sign him to a fully guaranteed contract at the league meetings last year, Haslam called it “a big swing and miss” that put the team in a hole. Watson missed the entire 2025 season after tearing his Achilles twice, but remains under contract and the word from Cleveland has been that he will have a chance to earn the quarterback job heading into the 2026 season.
Haslam sounded on board with that plan while in Arizona on Monday. Haslam said that he could have phrased things differently about Watson’s time in Cleveland because the quarterback has never lacked effort and that he will get a “fresh start” under new head coach Todd Monken.
“He certainly had the ability at one point, and we’re cautiously optimistic,” Haslam said, via Daniel Oyefusi of ESPN.com.
Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are the other in-house options for the Browns right now, although General Manager Andrew Berry suggested that group will grow when he spoke to reporters over the weekend. The direction the Browns take with any outside move will likely help determine just how much of a chance Watson has to win the job.
