Deshaun Watson Gets Another Chance, But Browns QB Situation Remains Unsettled

In the midst of the Week 1 disaster that the trip down to Jacksonville was for the Browns, many fans have asked the same question: when is enough, enough?

The quarterback position has been Cleveland’s most prominent seven deadly sin, as it has never been fully figured out since 1999. This season was setting up for more of the same, as it is finally the last season of the Deshaun Watson deal, and Shedeur Sanders was coming into his second season after an up-and-down rookie year.

Throughout training camp, Sanders seemed to have the upper hand after some solid days and some bad days from Watson. Then Todd Monken changed up the practices so that Watson would get more time with the starters and showed his hand early on about who would get the start in Week 1.

Watson's Week 1 performance was elevated by fourth-quarter garbage-time stats that included over 100 passing yards and a touchdown when Cleveland was down by four scores. Watson threw a bad interception on the first drive that was looking to be promising; he took five sacks, which are never without some fault of the o-line or QB, and overall did not move the offense enough.

Now, after you lose 34-10, there’s gonna be some talk about whether Watson is the correct guy at quarterback moving forward, especially when you have a very popular second-year guy behind him. Monken has not wavered on his decision yet, though, as he reiterated that Watson is starting Week 2 vs the Buccaneers.

Monken said earlier this week that he anticipates that Watson will be the starter in Week 2, and that after watching the film, it confirmed his belief that Watson should start. "It's only been two weeks he's gotten all the reps. And there were some really good things on film."

If you want to back Monken, you can agree that after Watson hadn’t played in an NFL regular-season game in over 690 days and that he made a couple of nice throws. The problem was that those throws didn’t particularly matter; that part wasn’t the offense’s fault.

Monken made a good point that I feel like went over Browns fans' heads because of the headline of his words. He said that this loss isn’t Watson’s fault, which, in many cases, the quarterback would not be centrally at fault if you looked at this game in a general sense. But since Watson is the quarterback and he is supremely disliked (for obvious reasons), the fans will overlook his point.

"We got to play better around him." Monken summarized, and he is correct that Cleveland needs to run the ball better and not turn it over on the offensive end, but also get some stops defensively, which they were unable to do on the Jags' first four drives.

What this quarterback situation is primarily setting up for is Week 3, when Cleveland will host its first game of the season against the Panthers. The last time Watson played in front of Browns fans, he was booed severely and made a stink about it in his press conference, calling the fans “disrespectful”.

Monken may have said that Watson isn’t playing for his job in Week 2, but on the banks of Lake Erie, the fans will let him know who they want playing for their team.

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