Browns coach Todd Monken surely knows which quarterback he’ll name as the team’s starter on Monday. Given the extent to which he downplayed Deshaun Watson’s jarring postgame remarks from Saturday about being booed loudly by the home crowd, it’s hard not to wonder whether it will indeed be Watson.
Based on Monken’s belief that quality play will quickly unruffle feathers, it’s possible that Monken is inclined to give Watson the first two games, both on the road at Jacksonville and Tampa Bay, to see if Watson can pull off an upset or two.
If the Browns somehow start 2-0, the vibe could be much different when the Browns open their home schedule in Week 3 against the Panthers.
However it goes, it seems clear that Monken won’t be making a 17-game decision right out of the gates. The man who wins the job as of Week 1 also wins the privilege of being the first guy benched.
Monken has said the announcement is coming on Monday. Which means he knows. And when he begins telling others, it will be just a matter of time until someone blabs — and everyone knows.
If nothing else, look for the Browns to curry favor with an insider or two by leaking it minutes before the official announcement is made. And with Monken due to speak to reporters again at 12:50 p.m. ET on Monday, expect to hear something late in the morning.
If we don’t hear something tonight.
Browns Clips
Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright is poised to do something that once would have been unthinkable: Leave the NFL and go play in the NCAA.
The Browns are waiving Wright, and he has an agreement in place to play for LSU this season, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. It’s possible that Wright could get claimed on waivers, which would complicate matters, although it sounds like Wright has decided he wants to play this year for LSU, where he surely has a lucrative NIL offer in place, and wait until next year to pursue the NFL.
Wright going back to college after signing with an NFL team never would have been possible under the rules that have governed college football for more than a century, but those rules have gone out the window. The NCAA keeps losing court battles over player eligibility rules, to the point where there aren’t many rules left. Wright can play anywhere he wants in college, and he has chosen LSU.
Wright spent his first two years of college football at Virginia Tech, then spent two more years at Ole Miss, where he played for Lane Kiffin, who will now coach him at LSU.
Browns head coach Todd Monken called it “crazy” that a player currently on the Browns’ roster will be playing college football this season, but until the NCAA comes up with eligibility rules that can withstand court challenges, the sport is in crazy times.
The Browns are getting closer and closer to naming a starting quarterback.
In a Sunday press conference with reporters via Zoom, coach Todd Monken said the team will name a starting quarterback on Monday.
What else at this point does he need to do to get there?
“I still have a few things to weigh out,” Monken said. “I’m not going to get into that. But we anticipate naming a starter tomorrow.”
Monken said Saturday’s postgame comments from quarterback Deshaun Watson regarding getting booed during the game (and being cheered when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon in 2024) will not be a factor in the decision.
The first-year coach also was asked about the reality that, for the Week 3 home opener, the fans could respond negatively to Watson’s presence as the starter.
“I’m not concerned about that,” Monken said. “What I’m concerned about is us playing well, as a team and on offense. Because when you play well, none of the other stuff matters.”
Monken is approaching all of this from a football perspective, which is fine. But the Watson situation is far more complicated than that. There’s a history that predates Monken’s hiring. An ugly one, which reached a low point on Saturday.
Monken seems to think none of that matters, focusing only on the quality of the next performance and not the past vibe that the trade for Watson, his contract, and his play has created.
For example, Monken compared fan reaction to going to a restaurant and getting cold soup. This ignores the simple fact that, as far as pro football goes, there’s only one restaurant in town. And the soup has been cold, moldy, and littered with rubber bands, consistently and repeatedly.
It’s entirely possible that Monken, who said the decision is ultimately his, has made his choice and will spend the next day getting everyone in the building on board who needs to be on board. And, possibly, to figure out a solution to Watson’s role — if the decision is made that Watson won’t be the starter.
Really, if Monken doesn’t know which way things are going today, what will change between now and Monday?
More immediately, the Browns have another home game on Thursday night to cap the preseason. At this point, it would be ludicrous to put Watson on the field again, five days after being relentlessly booed.
If he’s not the starter, and if with Monken saying the starting quarterback will not play on Thursday, the Browns likely will need to use Dillon Gabriel and Taylen Green in the last game that doesn’t count, if Watson isn’t named the starter.
Three days ago, Browns defensive end Alex Wright left practice on a cart during joint practice with the Bills, due to a lower-leg injury. On Saturday, coach Todd Monken said he didn’t have any information about Wright.
On Sunday, the truth was leaked.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, Wright has a season-ending rupture of the Achilles tendon. The Browns will place him on injured reserve.
Per the report, former first-round defensive end Derek Barnett will take Wright’s place on the roster.
Last November, the Browns signed Wright to a three-year, $33 million extension. A third-round pick in 2022, Wright has 51 regular-season appearances and 15 starts.
Wright was listed as the starting defensive end across from Jared Verse. Barnett played for the Eagles from 2017 into 2023. He was released late in the regular season and claimed on waivers by the Texans, where he remained through the 2025 season.
UPDATE 1:15 p.m. ET: The Browns have announced both moves.
On the surface, there’s no reason for the Browns to walk away from the last year of Deshaun Watson’s disastrous five-year, $230 million contract. They’re paying him $46 million for 2026; why not have him on the team?
At a deeper level (and it’s not much deeper than the surface), it’s time for this failed experiment to end.
The fans don’t want him. And, given the way the fans responded to him during his last two games in Cleveland, Watson no longer wants them.
He was surprised and bothered by the boos he heard on Saturday. And he’s still upset by the fact that fans cheered when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon during the 2024 season.
Watch the full press conference. It’s simply no longer sustainable. And it benefits no one for it to linger.
Watson won’t say it out loud, at least not yet. Asked if he regrets coming to Cleveland in the first place, Watson made the objectively ridiculous claim that he doesn’t regret “anything in my life.”
“I had different thoughts on how it was going to be, but it is what it is,” Watson said. “Sometimes the tables turn, and I’m patient enough because I’m a child of God, to wait for that time to change. So, I’m not tripping on it.”
In other words, he’s willing to count the days until he can get out of Cleveland for good. (Most Browns fans are probably doing the same thing.)
How can the Browns play him this year, especially at home? Asked whether he can put the cheering when he was injured and the booing when he was healthy behind him, Watson bluntly said, “I don’t know.”
“The only time I feel that energy is when I’m in the stadium or it’s on social media,” Watson said. “Like I mentioned before, when I’m in public, no one’s mentioning anything. So I think that’s the only time those people who are holding it in is trying to disrupt the energy. Because on social media, players can’t respond back and in the stadium, players can’t respond back. So, I get it, I understand it. It is what it is. . . . I don’t know. It’s a mental battle every day. I feel like I get more love on road games than I do at home games. So if it is my spot and [coach Todd Monken] does make me the starter, maybe it’s 17 away games, then. I don’t know.”
Here’s what we know. It’s a toxic situation that someone within the Browns organization should admit can’t continue.
At this point, it’s not about football or analytics or finding a way to get value for the investment. It’s about finding the best path forward for the team and for the player.
In many cases, an organization will do only what’s right for the team, regardless of whether it’s right for the player. In this case, the interests are fully aligned. Watson clearly wants to move on. The Browns should want to do the same.
The specific details of the divorce would require some thought. The nuances of the accounting rules could make it impossible to execute the plan to layer lingering cap charges through 2030 if he’s cut or traded (if anyone would want to trade for his $1.3 million base salary, and if he would be willing to waive his no-trade clause).
Even without a trade or an outright release, the two sides can do what the Texans did once the relationship between Watson and his former team was permanently fractured in 2021: pay him to not play.
This time around, the Browns would be paying Watson the last $1.3 million on his $230 million deal, while letting him leave a town that he no longer wants. And that arguably never wanted him.
The clock is ticking, and midnight has nearly arrived for Todd Monken.
The Cleveland quarterback decision is coming soon. Perhaps as soon as Sunday.
“At some point I’m going to have to decide, right?” Monken told reporters after Saturday’s preseason game against the Bills. “I’m saying it kind of jokingly. At some point we’ve got to get that guy the reps, so I’m not going to paint myself into a corner. Optimally, you’d like to give one player all of the reps and you know who the one is, and we’ve done the best we could as a staff trying to work through this. Like at any position.”
Monken made it clear that he plans to watch the film on Sunday and then talk to the coaching staff. A review of the entire picture is necessary to understand why things didn’t go well, on the occasions when they didn’t go well.
“I was looking at things live, and everybody had a hand in it,” Monken said. “I already know, looking at it and watching, we had too many issues with us, that had nothing to do with them. We’re playing some guys who just got with us, but alignment, assignment and communication, Browns hurting Browns, really. You’re not going to have a chance when that happens.”
The final drive, handled by third-stringer Dillon Gabriel, was a particular disaster. In one three-and-out effort, the Browns had three false starts, pushing them all the way to a third-and-25.
"[A]t the end, it was like, really?” Monken said. “That was some shitty football. I don’t care who goes out there. If I could have taken a knee, I probably would have. I mean, what the shit? I don’t know what to tell you.”
The first-year hea coach told the world plenty in his praise of Sanders’s ability to control the game with a strong cadence.
“We work on cadence and operation, and we’re going to continue to do it, because you can’t be leading the offense when you’re not leading the cadence,” Monken said. “In the first half we did, we had a shot. We got them to jump offside, we wanted to take a shot and we jumped, and we had another time we could’ve tapped. We got them in the neutral zone. That’s one thing Shedeur’s going to continue to get better at. We had a chance on third-and-12 to take a shot, he has to see the flag down, we checked it down but didn’t convert on third-and-eight. We were really good at cadence in the first half, but at the end there, it’s not good enough.”
As to Watson, Monken’s comments made it even more clear that, even though signs recently were pointing to the veteran as the starter, the tide has perhaps started to turn — sharply.
“I was disappointed for us collectively that we didn’t play well offensively [under Watson], I’ll just put it that way,” Monken said. “We had to get back on track a bunch. It happened in the first game. When you’re behind the chains, it’s hard. It’s just hard. You can’t force the defense into certain looks [when you] put yourself behind the chains.
“I’ll have to wait to see the tape, but I’m proud of the way he’s worked to get to where he’s at, and that’s part of it. Right? I know you’ve asked him, ‘Hey, how it feels to get booed?’ It’s a pretty easy question, it sucks. I don’t want to get booed. It comes with the territory. You don’t want to get booed? Let’s play good football. Let’s play good at quarterback, on offense and as a team, and then you won’t have to worry about all that, because it can turn just like that. Win, play good football, and everybody will be fine.”
As to the booing Watson, it’s more complicated than playing well. The fans were already wired to boo him, for reasons unrelated to his current level of play. The entire circumstances of his arrival and ongoing presence on the roster point to Browns fans being poised to boo him.
The boos could be heard when Watson took the field in the third quarter, even though the stands seemed to be largely empty. They booed him after the first drive of the second half. The boos were consistent, and unrelated to his play.
Watson said it himself. The boos weren’t about his performance. If he’s the starter in Week 3, he’ll hear it all day long — unless the Browns somehow upset both the Jaguars and Buccaneers on the road to start the season.
There will be plenty of subjectivity and discretion when the time comes to pick a starter between Sanders and Watson. If it’s close for Monken, the fact that the customers have made their position loud and clear will make Sanders the only right answer.
Browns coach Todd Monken has spent much of his career in the college ranks. Things have changed dramatically since then, however.
He currently has a first-year player on the roster who has entered the transfer portal, after winning an injunction this week that has given him another year of college football.
“Man, isn’t this shit crazy?” Monken told reporters after Saturday’s preseason contest against the Bills, a game in which Wright didn’t play. “I don’t even know what to say. As far as I know, he’s had a medical issue that wasn’t allowing him to practice. That’s a medical issue. It has nothing to do with me. He was cleared, so we dressed him just in case we had to have him. . . .
“I don’t know what to say. I wondered why Lane Kiffin reached out to me a week ago, now I know. I didn’t call him back; I guess I should have.”
Kiffin’s LSU is indeed one of the programs that has been trying to set the stage to create room for first-year NFL players who could return to college for another season.
Because even though the system craves a return to something that seems normal, the coaches want to win now. Those who can take advantage of the current chaos can acquire a legitimate edge in the quest to do so.
There was a theory that quarterback Deshaun Watson got his preseason start last week because the game was not being played in Cleveland. If that was a reason for the decision, it was a good one.
Watson was booed in his first home appearance for the Browns since tearing an Achilles tendon during the 2024 season.
After the game, quarterback Shedeur Sanders expressed disagreement with the verbal disapproval of Deshaun.
“Yeah, I mean, in general, I don’t appreciate that at all,” Sanders said, via the transcript distributed by the team. “Regardless of competition, we’re all human beings. I think we all need to understand that. In this room too, we’re all humans. I don’t do things to humans that I wouldn’t want done to me. I don’t like making people feel uncomfortable in different spaces, and that’s why, even in daily things I do, I try to make sure everybody’s comfortable. Because I know sometimes just being who I am can make people uncomfortable. I’m aware of that.
“For all the fans, we appreciate you showing up, and however you feel about the situation with Deshaun and everything, I think it’s more about a bigger purpose and it’s respect. It’s a respect thing that I feel should be there, because we’re all out there trying to do our best and serve the franchise the best way possible. We’re going out there to win games, doing everything we can. So I don’t really appreciate that.”
It’s a reasonable position, but it may not be very realistic when it comes to professional sports. The anonymity of a crowd makes it easier to boo, and those who pay for tickets feel entitled (and they arguably are) to voice their displeasure.
Watson arrived a year after twenty-plus lawsuits were filed against him for alleged misconduct during massage-therapy sessions. The Browns gave up a treasure trove of draft picks to get him, before giving him a five-year, $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract. He served an eleven-game suspension right out of the gates.
If he’d performed well, and if the team had won games, it would have been fine. Injuries and unimpressive performances magnified the negatives created by the overall situation.
While Deshaun was on the wrong end of the boos, he wasn’t the only target. Browns fans are, and should be, upset with everything about the acquisition and compensation of a player who has never delivered on the promise of what arguably has become the single worst transaction of the salary-cap era, if not of all time.
Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson said this week that he didn’t care about how fans reacted to him during Saturday’s home preseason game, but he appeared to be a bit rankled when asked at a postgame press conference about the boos that greeted his entry to the game in the third quarter.
Watson was making his first appearance in a home game since he tore his Achilles in 2024 and he heard those boos before he took his first snap. They continued while he went 5-of-12 for 36 yards and an interception in a 31-7 loss to the Bills.
“I didn’t have no reaction,” Watson said. “I think the whole world knows it has nothing to do about the performance. It’s a little bit [more] personal than that. I think that’s a disrespectful thing. I’m gonna keep whatever I feel with me and my family internally with how I feel about that and move on.”
Browns head coach Todd Monken said in his own press conference that “everybody will be fine” if Watson plays good football while helping the Browns win games, but Watson reiterated his disagreement with the idea that the booing is tied to performance when asked if he agreed with that sentiment.
“Last time I played on this field I tore my Achilles. That same fan base cheered when I got hurt,” Watson said. “What does that have to do with anything about performance? When a person gets hurt, especially for your own city and they cheer?”
Watson signed a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract after being traded to the Browns ahead of the 2022 season and he’s played poorly in 19 starts since joining the club. It remains to be seen if he will get to No. 20 in Week 1 — Monken declined to name a starter after Saturday’s game — but it seems like a safe bet that the reaction won’t be a terribly warm one if he takes the field for the Browns’ home opener in Week 3.
Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson said this week that he doesn’t care what kind of reception he gets from the fans in Cleveland. The reception he got in today’s preseason game was decidedly negative.
The fans in Cleveland loudly booed as Watson took the field and continued booing throughout the third quarter as Watson struggled. Although Huntington Bank Field is mostly empty, the fans who are there are making it known that they don’t like Watson quarterbacking their team.
Watson played poorly while the fans booed. The Browns’ offense went three-and-out on Watson’s first two drives, then Watson threw an interception on his third drive and threw a fourth-down incompletion to end his fourth drive.
Trading for Watson was a disaster for the Browns, who gave up three first-round picks, a second-round pick, a third-round pick and a fourth-round pick to get Watson, then gave him a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract. For that, Watson has played a total of 19 games in four seasons, and has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL in those 19 games. And the Browns made the move for Watson despite knowing he had been accused of sexually assaulting some two dozen massage therapists, accusations that resulted in Watson being suspended for the first 11 games of his time in Cleveland.
Given all that, Watson should expect to be booed in Cleveland if he’s the starter in Week Three, when the Browns play their first home game of the regular season. Whether Watson cares or not.
