Cleveland Browns

In the push and pull over whether NFL fields will be covered with high-quality grass, a global solution is possible, albeit unlikely, through collective bargaining. For now, the decisions will be made one team at a time — especially as new stadiums are built.

The Bills decided to convert from turf to grass in their new stadium. The Chiefs, who are in the process of building a new domed stadium in Kansas, prefer to continue to play on grass, but no decision has been made.

The Browns are also building a covered stadium, in suburban Brook Park. They currently play on grass. Per the team, the Browns will play on artificial turf in the new stadium.

That said, the new stadium will have the ability to accommodate grass, which happens most often when a venue hosts soccer matches. Which means that, in theory, the artificial turf for NFL games could eventually be swapped out for grass.

For now, the plan is artificial turf. Which will tip the current 16-16 balance of teams playing homes games on real grass and fake grass toward turf, 17-15.

Unless, of course, owners of teams that play on turf decide to switch to grass. Starting with the incoming owners of the Seahawks, possibly.

Four years ago, when the Browns, Panthers, Falcons, and Saints entered a four-way competition for quarterback Deshaun Watson, Cleveland was the first team to which Watson said, “No thanks.” A five-year, fully-guaranteed contract quickly changed his mind.

Still, there’s been a lingering perception that Watson didn’t really want to play for the Browns. Before too long, it seemed as if the Browns were counting the days until they could move on from Watson.

Will that change? On Friday, owner Jimmy Haslam kept the door open on Watson returning in 2027. On Saturday, Watson made his feelings for Cleveland clear.

“When I first got here, there was a lot of stuff going on, as the world knows,” Watson told reporters. “But I don’t have any bad feelings toward Cleveland. I love Cleveland. Me and my wife have our house on the east side, so we’re here all the time. We were here this summer. If you ask around, I’m at pretty much all the restaurants, hanging out, so I haven’t had a bad experience outside of different times in the stadium. I don’t know why that narrative is out there that people think that I don’t like Cleveland. My family and I have been enjoying our time here, if the opportunity shows up, we’ll see where it goes.”

The first step will be winning the starting job. The second step will be playing well enough to return. And the third step will be fending off any other teams that may want Watson, if he re-establishes himself as a high-level NFL starter.

Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson said on Saturday that his performance in training camp thus far has “been decent” and that he has his eyes on the next steps in his push to win the starting job in Cleveland.

The team will hold its first practice in pads on Monday and that will bring Watson closer to being in a game for the first time since tearing his Achilles midway through the 2024 season. Watson tore the Achilles again while rehabbing and he told reporters that he’s eager for a chance to show how far he’s come when the team starts playing preseason games.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Watson said, via a transcript from the team. “I haven’t played football in a long time, so for me, it doesn’t matter how long I play or how many games I play, I just want to play football. A lot of people wrote me off and said I wouldn’t be playing football again after two Achilles injuries. I’m proving that wrong and proving myself right. It’s a great opportunity for me to get out there and showcase what I can do.”

Watson said he has no idea when head coach Todd Monken will make a call about who starts in Week 1 between him and Shedeur Sanders, which could make their preseason results a major factor in how things play out in Cleveland.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when even a vague reference to betting lines by a broadcaster would sound every alarm at 345 Park Avenue.

Times have definitely changed.

Asked by reporters on Friday what a successful season would look like in 2026, owner Jimmy Haslam went straight to the wagering angle.

“I would say this, and we never do this, but I think the odds are for us to win five and a half games,” Haslam said. “I’ll take the over.”

After going winless in 2017, the Browns went six straight seasons with six or more wins, including a pair of playoff appearances. Over the last two years, however, the Browns were 8-24.

“We want to be fun to watch,” Haslam said. “We want to play hard and not make mistakes. Look like we’ve got our act together, which is something we didn’t have the last two years, and the expectations are we will this year.”

He said the team’s overall struggles are “something that keeps us awake at night.”

“It’s unacceptable, and I hate it most for our fans, because they deserve better than that,” Haslam said. “We’re working hard every day to not have that same kind of performance we’ve had in the past. We don’t have our heads in the sand — we know we haven’t performed.”

They haven’t. But they’re not far from being competitive. This season could be a struggle with a new coaching staff and a quarterback competition. They still seem to be laying the foundation to be better than they’ve been.

Truth be told, they can’t be much worse than they were in 2024 and 2025.

Last year, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam called the Deshaun Watson experiment “a big swing and miss.” Haslam isn’t ruling out stepping back into the batter’s box.

Meeting with reporters on Friday, Haslam didn’t close the door on Watson remaining with the Browns beyond 2026, the final year of his ill-advised five-year, $230 million, fully-guaranteed deal.

“I think there are all kinds of possibilities out there — so, yes,” Haslam said as to the possibility of Watson returning in 2027. “But here again, we’ve got to get through practice. I think our quarterbacks will play in the exhibition games, that’s obviously [coach] Todd [Monken’s] call, and then Todd will figure out who’s going to start.”

If Watson wins the job and plays well, why wouldn’t the Browns think about bringing him back? Winning cures all, from off-field problems to injury histories to so-so performances from a player who is now six years removed from playing at a high level.

Still only 30, Watson has plenty of football left. And it would be a typical Browns move for Watson to have a resurgence, for the Browns to let him go, and for Watson to finally get back to his franchise-quarterback form with another team in 2027.

Nearly two months to the day after the Browns surprised everyone by trading defensive end Myles Garrett to the Rams, Btowns owner Jimmy Haslam addressed the move in a Friday press conference.

“That was Andrew’s decision,” Haslam told reporters, referring to G.M. Andrew Berry. “I don’t know what Andrew shared with you yesterday or in the past, that’s something that — the conversations we’ve had for about a while before it was announced, and the Rams were a good partner there and kept it quiet. But, a decision like that, ownership is going to be involved, but it’s Andrew’s decision, Andrew’s recommendation — in this case, ownership left it there.”

Haslam was asked why he accepted Berry’s recommendation.

“Well, one, I think we got a really good player back, and I think you saw him today — a really good player who’s 25 years old and still on his rookie contract, so that’s the biggest reason,” Haslam said. “And then we picked up a one, a two and a three, and I think we all realize the three years we didn’t have number one picks due to the Deshaun [Watson] trade — one of those years I don’t think we even had a second — and the value of those picks, as we’ve proved the last two years, are tremendous. Myles [Garrett] is an unbelievable player. I was thinking the other night — Jim Brown, Joe Thomas, Myles Garrett — they’re all first-ballot Hall of Famers, world-class people, and so it was not an easy decision, but we’ve made it, we’re moving on and excited about Jared [Verse] and excited about those three draft picks.”

It was a surprising change of position by Haslam and the Browns after the 2025 season, one in which Garrett set the single-season sack record and was named the NFL’s defensive player of the year.

But, really, what did it do for the Browns? They won five games.

Adding draft picks is a plus, given the draft picks that were squandered in the Watson trade. Those picks become cheap, young players who can (if drafted and developed properly) become key, long-term contributors.

It was still a stunning shift by the organization. In 2025, Haslam said the team never gave the possibility of trading Garrett a “serious thought,” even though he demanded a trade publicly in early February and wanted to meet with Haslam in early March. (Haslam declined to do so.)

A year later, the Browns did much more than give it a serious thought. They arguably could have gotten even more for him in 2025, without having to sign him to a new, market-setting deal that made Garrett decide to stick around.

The Browns are interested in bringing back veteran defensive end Jadeveon Clowney.

Fellow edge rusher Jared Verse would be a big fan of the move if it happens.

“Clowney’s obviously one of the best rushers I’ve ever watched,” Verse said Thursday, via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com. “Watching his film from college and everything like that, that’s one of the biggest reasons I even ever played D-end. So, having that dude in the room would be monumental for me. But I will say having that vet presence is probably even bigger than just my personal honor of him.

“Having that vet presence, someone that’s been around the game, someone that can teach you things like that. That’s why I went to the Sack Summit to be around Von Miller, Maxx Crosby, all these high-end rushers because you can learn so much from them.”

Verse added that Clowney can “100 percent” help him expand his set of pass-rushing moves.

“I mean, obviously we’re signing him to help on the field and to help the team develop as a whole,” Verse said. “But I think me personally, selfishly, I think it would be very helpful to have that vet presence around.”

Verse, who has finished his first two seasons with 4.5 and 7.5 sacks, wants to start converting more of his pressures into sacks, and feels Clowney can help him do that.

“When you look at the numbers and everything like that, I’m never a big stat guy, big number guy, but to be [transparent] with it and to talk about the statistics over there, I’m one of the highest pressure rates,” Verse said. “But pressures don’t mean anything if you can’t finish. Getting to the quarterback means nothing if you can’t finish. Yeah, it throws him off a little bit and messes with his head, but sacks are what puts them back a little bit. Finishing is just my biggest part.”

The Browns are alternating Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson at quarterback with the first-team offense to start training camp, which is largely the same process as the team employed during the offseason program.

Head coach Todd Monken said earlier this week that he’s not putting a timetable on when he’d like to declare a winner. That’s a stance General Manager Andrew Berry reiterated in his Thursday press conference.

“I think it’s important to have the starting quarterback named before Week 1,” Berry said.

The Browns appear committed to letting the competition play out. But there’s an argument to be made in favor of Sanders simply given that he’s younger and ostensibly has a higher ceiling to potentially become Cleveland’s quarterback of the future.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out in terms of the whole quarterback of the future discussion,” Berry said. “Ultimately, we’re going to play the player who is the most productive on the field. ... I think Deshaun’s only 30. So, there’s no need to make any decisions about the future right now. And we’ll let it play out and figure it out as we go.”

Deion Sanders expressed interest in meeting with Browns head coach Todd Monken this offseason and the two men were able to make it happen at Browns training camp on Thursday.

Sanders said he want to have the meeting to talk about coaching his son Shedeur because Sanders “can tell him a few things about how to get him going” after their time together at Colorado. Monken said he was interested in having that conversation this spring and said on Thursday that it was “awesome” to get it done.

Monken said he and Sanders spent much of their time telling stories about their football careers, but that Sanders “gave me a little bit of insight” into how his son processes things as a quarterback. Monken added “we’ve been able to see” most of what Sanders was talking about and that he got to tell Sanders “what a great job Shedeur has done.”

“It was good. Part-coach, part-father, which is what it should be,” Monken said.

Shedeur Sanders is competing with Deshaun Watson for the starting quarterback job in Cleveland. It doesn’t sound like anything that happened on Thursday will give him a leg up in that race, but the more insight the better for one of Monken’s first big decisions in his new job.

When Jadeveon Clowney left the Browns after the 2022 season, the two parties were not on the best terms.

But all of that now seems to be water under the bridge, as Clowney visited with Cleveland on Wednesday and appears to be getting closer to signing with the club.

Browns General Manger Andrew Berry told reporters on Thursday that he has no qualms about re-signing Clowney after a “really good visit.”

“No. 1, reconciliation is possible in life,” Berry said, via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com. “And I don’t subscribe to the notion of defining people by really their worst or best moment.

“But in this case, a moment of weakness, he made a mistake. It’s something you talk through. We’ve maintained a good relationship with JD since, really since 2022. And I think the second thing is we had him for two years and it was certainly a lot more positives than negatives despite how it ended. … So we do feel comfortable bringing him back into the organization if it’s the right fit on both sides.”

Clowney’s criticisms about the team had to do with former edge rusher Myles Garrett and how, at the time, Cleveland seemed to be prioritizing Garrett’s sack totals over the broader defensive scheme.

But Garrett is no longer with the team, and neither are the members of that defensive coaching staff.

Clowney recorded 11.0 sacks with the Browns in 26 games over two years from 2021-2022.

In 13 games for Dallas last year, Clowney tallied 8.5 sacks with 12 tackles for loss and 10 quarterback hits.