Todd Monken Wastes No Time Justifying Browns’ Deshaun Watson Decision

Deshaun Watson has been officially named the Cleveland Browns starting quarterback going into the 2026 NFL regular season and with that decision being made, head coach Todd Monken knows he’ll face great scrutiny all season long.

After all, it won’t be easy for his offense to operate over the course of the next four months while playing “17 away games”, as Watson characterized his relationship with Browns fans after being booed during the team’s second preseason game last Saturday.

Nonetheless, what might be Monken’s biggest and most critical resolution as an NFL head coach came extremely early in his Browns’ tenure, as was evidenced by how quickly he had to stand up and defend it from outside observers.

“What they’re not seeing is the film. They’re not in the building. So they’re not gonna know what we know. Now, you can see with your own eyes. You can forecast what you expect it to be. A number of those people weren’t even in practice. So I don’t really concern myself with what they really think. I know what we think, and what we see every day in our building, and our players and the momentum we have, and we’re 100 percent behind Deshaun.”

Todd Monken: “I know what we think and what we see everyday in our building and our players and the momentum we have. And we’re 100% behind Deshaun.” pic.twitter.com/waHIEOMV4S
— Daniel Oyefusi (@DanielOyefusi) August 24, 2026

One thing that does stand out in Monken’s comments is him saying “we’re 100 percent behind Deshaun,” because we truly don’t know who that “we” is. Is it the trio of top decision-makers for the team -- owner Jimmy Haslam, general manager Andrew Berry and Monken? Is it Monken and his staff? Is it the locker room? The franchise as a whole? Because at this point it’s pretty obvious that Shedeur Sanders does have some support in his corner.

And while Monken stated his decision to start Watson wasn’t a week to week thing, he did seem to backtrack a little later on.

“That’s what we do. That question is not a quarterback question, it is everybody’s position, right? Every single week we have to prove it. That’s what we do. As pros, we have to prove it every week.”

Why this quarterback competition was so crucial for head coach Todd Monken

Monken waited long enough to get his first shot at an NFL head coaching job. As a matter of fact, only five first-time NFL head coaches with no interim head coaching experience in the league debuted in a regular season game older than Monken’s age when Week 1 comes around, at 60 years and 220 days old.

Monken knows chances like this don’t come around often, and fumbling his shot in Cleveland might mean never getting another one. Not one of the five older debuting coaches that Monken head coached another NFL team, and two of them, Rod Rust and David Culley, were one and done on the job.

On the flipside, the Browns have had two head coaches last for just one season under Haslam, Rob Chudzinski -- his first ever head coach hire as an owner -- in 2013 and Freddie Kitchens in 2019. In both instances, poor quarterback play was a major factor.

Backups Dillon Gabriel and Tayler Green are expected to split quarterbacking duties for the final preseason game on Thursday, with Watson and Sanders watching from the sidelines.

Then, the first real test comes along, when the Browns visit the Jaguars for Week 1 of the regular season, on September 13.

We’ll know soon enough if Monken hitched his incipient head coaching career to the right quarterback soon enough.

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