Think your job is difficult? Imagine cold-calling locals inside the Cleveland Browns’ ticket office. First, you’ve got to immediately launch into something cheery to prevent the person on the other end of the line from hanging up on the spot.
Hey, Mike! Listen. I know you remember the good ‘ol days of Bernie Kosar and Webster Slaughter. What about Leroy Hoard barreling through defenders?
Oh. You don’t. Hmm. OK, is your Dad around?
Oh. He renounced his fandom 20 years ago? Hmm. Well, anyway… ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!? Boy, do I have a deal for YOU.
Shocker, you can attend the Browns’ season-opener for merely 48 bucks on StubHub. (Only $522 cheaper than the cheapest ticket to their friends 200 miles up Lake Erie, mind you.)
Get ‘em while they’re cold.
The team’s $230 Million Dollar Quarterback who has spent the last half-decade either suspended over sexual misconduct allegations during massages, injured or playing poorly looked terrible in another football game and proceeded to scold the fan base for booing him. You’ve seen the clip by now. Watson called the jeers “disrespectful,” adding that “it’s personal” — a reference to those accusations.
He reached his breaking point. It’s not even September.
“Last time I played on this field,” Watson said, “I tore my Achilles and that same fan base cheered when I got hurt. So, what does that have to do with anything about performance? When a person gets hurt, especially in their own city, and they cheer.”
Watson admitted he’s not sure he can overcome the boos.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s a mental battle every day.”
The next day, he was named the starting quarterback.
This is the organization that both ran Baker Mayfield out of town and listened to everything Dan Campbell had to say and turned its nose.
A shame the Browns can’t at least get to the regular season before wetting the bed.
This season already feels like a waste of time.
Before we resume writing on the franchises that are taking this season seriously, I suppose its worth riffing on the Browns mid-flight here.
We see the football and business wings of a building clash in pro football, but never to this humiliating extreme. The last five years have been more of a monster truck expedition of self-destruction. All of this began with the Browns taking on a PR nightmare — remember the “baby yoga” pose? — in the name of football, of winning. Whenever he returned from suspension, they figured Watson would bamboozle defenses exactly as he did with the Houston Texans and any fans miffed by his unsavory conduct off the field would experience fan-amnesia. We see it all the time in sports. Mike Vick ran a dogfighting ring, went to prison for 21 months, received a second chance from Andy Reid and won Comeback Player of the Year in 2010. Fans adored him all over again. All in the NFL’s most volatile market. Take three minutes to Google Ben Roethlisberger and Karl Malone. Not pretty! Both are accused of worse crimes than Watson yet can return to Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City as conquering heroes.
Instead, Watson kept getting hurt. And whenever he’s been healthy, he has inspired no confidence. There was a fleeting moment this marriage had a shred of hope. Into the 2024 season, we spent some time in Berea. Jim Schwartz’s No. 1-ranked defense was fresh off a playoff appearance. If Old Man Joe Flacco could win, the Browns reasoned, a healthy Watson could do even more. The private quarterbacks coach who knows Watson best put it best that summer.
“Confidence is a muscle,” Quincy Avery told us. “You stop working out for a while, it goes away for a little bit. But I think that he’s in a good spot and he’s going to be able to get that confidence back. He just needs to see it, right? He goes out there and plays really good Week 1 against the Dallas Cowboys, I think that it’s going to really start rolling.”
Once upon a time, in Houston, this QB danced through defenses with ease. He was one of the most exhilarating players in the sport.
It didn’t take long for Cleveland to realize such dreams were farcical. Dallas humiliated the Browns in that season opener and they stumbled to a 3-14 record.
Through all of his issues on and off the field, Watson has clearly lost all confidence.
Then, he tore his Achilles. Twice.
I figured owner Jimmy Haslam had seen enough. The spring of 2025 — in a refreshing moment of introspection — he even admitted the Browns “took a big swing and miss with Deshaun.” He continued: “We thought we had the quarterback. We didn’t. And we gave up a lot of draft picks to get him, so we’ve got to dig ourselves out of that hole … (The trade) was an entire organization decision and it ends with Dee (Haslam) and I, so hold us accountable.”
When we returned to Cleveland that summer, it seemed like the team had a real chance to step into a whole new world. No longer would they trick themselves into seeing a quarterback that did not exist. The fact that No. 4 wasn’t on the field was a promising sign in itself. It didn’t matter if he was technically on the roster. This looked like a franchise finally moving on. That November, the team’s spectacled snake oil salesman Paul DePodesta also left the building. Strong drafts stacked up. The Browns even have some old-school dawgs on the roster. We profiled one of them: safety Grant Delpit.
But then, we can only assume business got in the way again.
Cleveland didn’t want to destroy its cap by eating Watson’s contract.
Cutting him right now creates a $86,206,864 dead cap hit for 2027, per Spotrac.
No realistic starting options were added the last six months.
Haslam reverted to operating like the CEO of a business instead of a football team, desperate to get anything out of his $230 million investment that he can.
On paper, that makes sense. He’d hate to see Watson succeed anywhere else after writing all those checks.
The NFL, however, is quite different than a Pilot Flying J truck stop. The mere presence of a GM, a coach, a quarterback that everyone knows shouldn’t be leading 50+ men in a locker room doubles as a mental anchor holding everyone down. That’s how one higher-up with the New York Jets described Woody Johnson this offseason. Everyone sees who’s pulling the strings in New Jersey — a buffoon — and cannot muster any real, organic hope for the future. Year to year to agonizing year. No transaction matters if this is the man in charge. The Arizona Cardinals, as written, suffer from the same crisis of confidence. In Cleveland, Haslam’s had his own issues. Further, when the quarterback central to the entire operation hasn’t looked good in ages… and he’s absurdly chastising paying customers… and everyone knows the only reason he’s on the roster is his cartoonish contract, it’s bound to kill off motivation.
If Watson was a free agent worth the vet minimum, would anyone really sign him? Here’s thinking I’d be asking my “Real Football” co-host Jim Monos if his UFL would consider signing Watson.
Everyone knows 2026 doesn’t matter to the Browns. They’re clearly aiming to draft a quarterback in 2027.
Morale has to mean something inside a locker room. Cut him. Make him a distant No. 3. Do anything. Watson has since apologized for his remarks but, damn. He sure sounded like a man who wanted nothing to do with Cleveland after his showing vs. Buffalo.
That’s why you can’t help but feel for the team’s new head coach Todd Monken.
The more he speaks, the more I like the fact that he’s in charge. Way back when the Browns kicked Mayfield to the curb for Watson, a source told ESPN the team desired an “adult” in the QB room. An objectively bizarre statement. There are many other “adults” the Browns could’ve chosen at the position. Four years later, Watson’s still here.
Through an impossible circumstance, Monken has most certainly operated like the adult in the room.
Fresh off Watson’s bizarre postgame rant, here’s what Monken said in case you missed it:
“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. That’s just part of it. I told him, ‘You good? We’re good.’ That’s part of what we do.”
He named Watson QB1. His options weren’t exactly stellar and you can’t help but wonder if his boss stepped in. Given truth serum, I’d love to hear what Monken really thinks about his quarterback room.
The crazy thing is, Cleveland actually has been building something promising around the quarterback position.
Nor is there any shame in planning for the future. Hell, one could still argue Cleveland is closer to a championship than the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Pittsburgh’s Art Rooney all but screams from the mountaintops that he loathes rebuilding. A 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers isn’t competing with Joe Burrow’s Bengals and Lamar Jackson’s Ravens in the AFC North this season, yet he’s good enough to steal a few wins and the Steelers roster is solid overall. They’ll muddle around .500 like they always do and get stuck in the murky middle yet again next offseason.
The Browns, on the other hand, are positioned well to draft a quarterback high in the ‘27 class. They also own the Los Angeles Rams’ first-rounder as potential ammo to move up if they somehow win five or six games this fall.
But there’s no reason to enthusiastically welcome the controversy and dead weight of a player 0.01 percent of the fan base seems to enjoy. Especially after Watson said the quiet part out loud this week — he cannot overcome the (literal) noise. By all accounts in training camp, Watson has done nothing to suggest he deserves to start in this league. There have been no flashes of 2018 and 2019 brilliance past.
Shedeur Sanders probably stinks, too. Starting and benching Sanders brings its own host of problems. The Browns simply should’ve done anything but back themselves into this corner at quarterback. Recycle Kirk Cousins, Jimmy G, beg Flacco to return, anything to maintain a little pride.
Of course, this all reeks again like business and football clashing — an owner trying to salvage arguably the worst contract in NFL history. Ironic considering the scene that’ll now play out downtown. If Watson’s still the quarterback by the team’s home opener in Week 3, a large chunk of the fan base will refuse to show up. The unlucky few in attendance will undoubtedly boo at the first Watson incompletion on third down.
He won’t be able to handle it, Sanders will get the call at some point and this season will hyperventilate week to week to week with zero support at home or abroad.
There’s no price to put on reputation, and the Browns brand is (somehow) sinking lower.
Much to Watson’s dismay, this 2026 season won’t have a happy ending. The Browns only have themselves to blame.
The closing line of no happy ending was really well played. Excellent article overall.
He deserves everything he’s getting. He likely assaulted 26 LMT’s and has no remorse at all. You think those women can ever forget how he violated their trust with his deviant behavior?
The money is his to keep. We can’t do anything but hope he gets taken or wastes it. But we can boo him for just taking up space.
And no, Ben is also in the same boat. As is Winstonburger. Three of a kind.