Who Really Made the Decision To Name Deshaun Watson the Browns Starting Quarterback?

It’s been 48 hours since the Cleveland Browns, through head coach Todd Monken, brazenly anointed Deshaun Watson as the team’s starter for Week 1 of the regular season, and the fallout is still reverberating beyond Berea.

Why? Because even after admitting that there wasn’t “anything specific” that Watson had done to separate himself from Shedeur Sanders in an “open quarterback competition” that had run throughout the offseason, the club still opted for the guy who just a couple of days earlier, had shown in no uncertain terms his despise towards Cleveland and its fans after being booed following a miserable preseason outing.

However, one specific quote from Monken’s media availability yesterday suggests that it might not have been the head coach's choice to make from the start.

“Those are organizational decisions, that’s the way it runs. We talked about it. We had conversations about it, and we landed on this.”

The curious thing about that quote is that given Monken’s reputation as an old-school bluntly straightforward coach, he didn’t just say it was his decision and his alone to name Watson the team’s starting quarterback.

Why the ‘who’ matters when it comes to Cleveland's Deshaun Watson woes

The ‘who’ is critical because it points directly to the same person who pushed for the Watson trade in the first place: owner Jimmy Haslam.

• Let’s rewind back to October of 2025, when during an interview with The Athletic, Haslam took some heat off former head coach Kevin Stefanski for “A big trade we made didn't work out, and you know, we're all suffering from that,” implying it was his decision.

• Now let’s go a little further back to March of 2025, with what seemed Haslam’s most damning statement regarding the Watson trade, before making a U-Turn earlier this year on his stance.

“We took a big swing and miss with Deshaun. 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 and I, so hold us accountable.”

The “entire organization decision” part seems oddly familiar. And again, who else within the organization aside from Haslam could get away with such a sharp 180° on Watson?

• If we go back a further to November of 2024, a little time after Watson’s first Achilles’ injury, general manager Andrew Berry was asked if the Watson trade was a mandate from the owner.

“All of us were on board,” Berry said according to ESPN, eluding a straight answer. He could have just said “no”, that it was his call, had it been the case, After all, Haslam had already fully credited Berry with the masterful idea of a $230 million five-year fully guaranteed deal to get Watson to waive his no-trade clause with Houston and sign for the Browns, after Cleveland was reportedly out of consideration as his next team. But just like Monken did on Saturday, he refused to take sole responsability for such a big decision.

• Then, there's this little nugget from Haslam right after firing Stefanski earlier this year. "I don't think there was one breaking point. I think you’ve got to look at the body of work." Also sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?

• Finally, it's worth remembering that when Haslam isn't on board with something, we find out, too. Like when he stated right after last year's draft, "That’s Andrew Berry’s call. Andrew made the call to pick Shedeur.”

Fast forward to 2026 and the person responsible for pushing the worst trade in the history of the league is the same person keeping the failed experiment alive, using the same language.

If that was going to be the mandate from above to begin with, why make a whole charade out of a "quarterback competition" that only minimizes Watson’s chance for success?

At this point, it just feels like -- $46 million guranteed notwithstanding for this season -- Haslam just refuses to be wrong. The same tone-deaf stubborness found in the Haslams' statement right after trading for Watson, can be identified in Monken's words from Saturday.

And just like in 2022, there's no reason to believe he won't be wrong again this time around.

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