Deshaun Watson is looking to get a leg up in the Browns’ quarterback competition.
According to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, Watson has returned to the team facility this week to train with his private physical therapist and private QBs coach.
Watson is competing with second-year signal-caller Shedeur Sanders to be the Browns’ starting quarterback to start the season.
New head coach Todd Monken had said that he wanted a starter in place by the end of the offseason program. But Monken noted earlier this month that he was not ready to name a starter, in part because both Watson and Sanders had shown the ability to play winning football for the club.
Watson, who missed all of the 2025 season with a torn Achilles, is entering the final season of his five-year, fully guaranteed contract with Cleveland.
He has started 19 games since the infamous trade that brought him to the Browns, completing 61.2 percent of his passes for 3,365 yards with 19 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
Cleveland was 1-6 in games Watson started during the 2024 season.
Cabot also notes that Watson is planning to host a passing camp for some of his offensive teammates in South Florida in mid-July. Sanders said that he would join that session instead of hosting a different one on his own, citing the fact that they’re all teammates.
We’ll see if any of it makes a difference for either QB once the Browns put on pads during training camp and get on the field for preseason games.
Browns Clips
Browns fans will have nine chances to check out the team during training camp this summer.
The team announced their slate of open practice sessions on Monday. The team’s rookies will report to camp on July 23 and the whole team is due in on July 28.
The first open practice at the team’s facility will be held on July 31. The other open practices will be held on August 1, August 4-8, and August 11-12. All of the practices are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET.
All of the practices will be open to the general public with tickets becoming available on July 15. Season ticket holders will be able to reserve tickets on July 14.
The Browns have officially made two moves in their front office.
Cleveland announced on Monday that the club has brought back Ryan Grigson to the organization as senior football advisor. Additionally, Chris Cooper has been promoted to senior vice president of football administration.
The move with Grigson was previously reported last week. The former Colts G.M. had been with the Vikings since 2022, the first three seasons as senior vice president of player personnel and in 2025 as assistant General Manager.
This is Grigson’s third stint with the Browns, as he was a senior personnel executive for the club in 2017 before serving as senior football advisor from 2020-2021.
Cooper is heading into his 13th season with Cleveland. After joining the team as director of football administration in 2014, he was promoted to vice president of football administration and served in that role for the last seven seasons.
The Browns are still sorting out who their quarterback will be in Week 1, but they have a better sense of who will be catching passes from either Deshaun Watson or Shedeur Sanders.
First-round pick KC Concepcion, second-round pick Denzel Boston and free agent acquisition Tylan Wallace joined Jerry Jeudy, Cedric Tillman and Isaiah Bond in the wide receiver group this offseason. That makes for a much deeper group than the team was working with during the 2025 season and Concepcion said on NFL Network recently that he believes it has the potential to be a potent one as well.
“I think that this new wide receiver room, it can be dangerous,” Concepcion said. “Everybody complements each other. Everybody is a different receiver.”
Tight end Harold Fannin was the team’s leader in receptions and receiving yards last season while Jeudy was the only wideout with more than 21 catches. The offseason moves show a desire to change things in 2026 and Concepcion thinks the team is on the right track.
In 2025, the NFL began outfitting the jerseys of the prior year’s award winners with gold shields. This year, a pair of Rams will be wearing them.
The gold shields go to the reigning NFL MVP, the offensive player of the year, the defensive player of the year, the offensive rookie of the year, and the defensive rookie of the year.
This year, the five awards that will be acknowledged with gold shields were won by Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (MVP), Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njgiba (OPOY), then-Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (DPOY), Panthers receiver Tetairoa McMillan (OROY), and Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger (DROY).
With Garrett being traded to the Rams, L.A. will have both Stafford and Garrett wearing the gold shields. (If Garrett hadn’t been traded, the 5-12 Browns would have two defensive players wearing gold shield).
The gold shields are hard to notice, since the shield on each jersey is small. The issue landed caught our eye on a slow Sunday because the Seahawks have posted an image of Smith-Njigba in his new jersey.
And, no, Smith-Njigba’s gold shield doesn’t have a typo.
Todd Monken’s three seasons as the Ravens’ offensive coordinator didn’t result in a Super Bowl title, but his work in Baltimore was impressive enough to help land him the Browns’ head coaching job this offseason.
Monken gives quarterback Lamar Jackson a lot of credit for that. In an interview with Brian Wacker of the Baltimore Sun, Monken called Jackson a “tremendous person” and said that he “wouldn’t have this job without him.” Monken also said that he told Jackson that in response to a congratulatory text from the quarterback after landing the Cleveland post, but added that those warm feelings will only extend so far.
“Then I said, ‘go f—k yourself,’” Monken said. “We are going to blitz you every third down. He laughed.”
Jackson won the MVP in 2023 and finished second in voting in 2024, but the Ravens lost close playoff games in both of those seasons. The quarterback’s injuries helped keep them out of the playoffs in 2025 and Monken said that “everything has a shelf life” in regard to the Ravens’ decision to clean house on the coaching side after the season.
Given Cleveland’s interest, Monken may have been moving on either way and now he’ll be tasked with trying to stop a quarterback he was previously trying to lead to a championship.
A report earlier Wednesday indicated Ryan Grigson was leaving the Vikings to pursue another opportunity in the NFL. We now know what that opportunity is.
Grigson is returning to the Browns as a senior football advisor, Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com reports.
He held the same position for the Browns from 2020-21 and was a senior personnel executive in Cleveland in 2017.
New Vikings General Manager Nolan Teasley offered to keep Grigson in a different role after hiring Andrew Healy and Trent Kirchner as assistant General Managers. Grigson, though, chose to leave for Cleveland.
Grigson served as assistant General Manager for the Vikings last season under Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. It was a promotion from senior vice president of player personnel, a position he held with the Vikings from 2022-24.
Grigson worked as the Colts’ General Manager from 2012-16.
After new Vikings General Manager Nolan Teasley hired Andrew Healy and Trent Kirchner as assistant General Managers, it was reported that Ryan Grigson was expected to remain in a different role with the team.
Alas, Grigson has moved on.
Neil Stratton of Inside the League reports that Grigson is leaving the Vikings, where he served as assistant General Manager last season under Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. Grigson was senior vice president of player personnel for the team from 2022-24.
The Vikings no longer list Grigson on their website.
He is pursuing a job with another team.
Grigson worked as the Colts’ General Manager from 2012-16.
Jimmy Haslam is one of the rare sports owner to have his fingerprints all over a pair of massive deals in two different sports in the same month.
With the Milwaukee Bucks trading Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat, barely three weeks after the Cleveland Browns traded Myles Garrett, Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo Sports reports that the Browns owner was a “driving force” in the decision to pick the Heat deal over an offer from the Boston Celtics that included Jaylen Brown.
As O’Connor explains it, “Haslam didn’t want to risk Jaylen Brown wanting out of Milwaukee in a year after dealing with Giannis and Myles Garrett trade demands.” Instead, Haslam wanted the “certainty” that comes from having draft picks. (Until, of course, those players selected with the extra picks want out, too.)
Haslam’s involvement with the Bucks is no surprise. It became clear last month that he’d be taking a more active role in the NBA team he partially owns.
Which serves as a reminder that owners always have the right to take an active role in roster management — regardless of whether they have the skills, knowledge, and/or ability to do so.
In Cleveland, Haslam has been the common denominator through the last 14 years of dysfunction. Now, dysfunction could be descending on Wisconsin’s NBA franchise.
At least dysfunction is easier to spell than Antetokounmpo.
Joe Thomas and Myles Garrett were teammates for one season — Garrett’s rookie year of 2017.
Then Thomas retired after a terrific career, and Garrett took over as the best player on Cleveland’s roster for the next eight years.
But Garrett no longer has that title, as the Browns traded him to the Rams earlier this month in a blockbuster deal.
In a recent interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio, Thomas noted that he understood why Cleveland made the deal, particularly given that the Browns received Jared Verse as part of the trade package.
“Yeah, I mean, I think the news came out, it probably caught a lot of people by surprise,” Thomas said. “I knew there was always going to be a chance that the Browns [would trade] Myles, just knowing the situation they’re in and the valuable asset they had. But for Cleveland fans, it’s tough, right? Because for several of those seasons that Myles was here in Cleveland, he was the one thing we got to cheer for, right? Last year, out of the playoff hunt for a long time, but it gave us reason to be proud as Browns fans, to see him chasing that sack record, and to finally get it. And just to see the commitment that he had on the field to his team, to the city, it was incredible.
“So it was really hard to hear that he was traded. It hurts everybody that Myles is not a Brown anymore.”
But, Thomas continued, this trade should help set up the Browns for long-term success.
“I’m not willing to accept the fact that we’re only allowed to think that our ceiling as Browns fans is to cheer for a player that’s having a good season, or breaking a record,” Thomas said. “I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we’re still here to try to win championships. And when you look at the Myles trade, to be able to get a great young player like Jared Verse — who’s a tremendous pass rusher, who’s a great asset to that team. He’s on a friendly contract, saving money there. Getting three draft choices for Myles — a first, second, and a third. It puts us in a much better position for the next two, three, four years as we’re in this building phase.
“So, as you step away from the emotion of losing Myles, you realize this puts the team in a much better situation moving forward. And it was the right decision, even though it hurts.”
