The Browns have decided to give quarterback Deshaun Watson a chance to lead the team to its first 2-0 start since 1993. If that doesn’t happen, it’s impossible to imagine that Watson will be the starter for the Sunday-Thursday home games against the Panthers and the Steelers in Week 3 and Week 4, respectively.
The bar is (or at least should be) very high for Watson to keep the job beyond Week 2. And if/when the Watson experiment (2026 version) fails, there’s not much the Browns can do.
As mentioned yesterday, the best-case version of the worst-case scenario would be to keep Watson under contract, and possibly to reach an agreement that they’ll pay the balance of his $1.3 million salary with Watson not present at practices and games.
Cutting him or trading Watson isn’t an option. The Browns have, through a series of restructurings, pushed $86.1 million of his $230 million into 2027 and beyond. One of the restructurings included a term that guarantees the Browns will release him early in the 2027 league year, setting the Browns up for a cap hit of $34.6 million in 2027 and $51.5 million in 2028. If they were to cut him or trade him this season, the full dead-money charge of $86.1 million in 2027.
So either Watson plays well enough for him to keep the job, or he gets benched for Shedeur Sanders and remains on the team. And if the Sanders experiment fails badly enough that the Browns simply can’t play him, they’ll need to find a way to keep him around and still pay him.
