Deshaun Watson As Week 1 Starter in 2026 Is Finally Peak Browns

Cleveland has reached a tipping point, turning to a QB the fans have booed mercilessly and even the owner has called ‘a big swing-and-miss.’

Deshaun Watson is entering the final season of his five-year deal in Cleveland. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Do you remember how you felt after seeing the end of Requiem for a Dream for the first time? Maybe you were in college like I was and, up until that point, had yet to confront pure, unfiltered bleakness—something that was both outlandishly macabre and entirely plausible. It was the kind of horror so cold and penetrating that not even a season’s worth of Daniel Tiger under a weighted blanket could sweep it out of the dark recesses of your brain (trust me, I tried, ugga mugga). 

Such is the reality of being a Browns fan on Monday as the team has achieved something truly historic: Peak Browns. Browns uncut, straight from a duct-taped bag that was dropped from a smuggler’s plane into the jungle abyss. The kind of Browns-ness that smells as if it had been freshly dug up from an ancient grave. Deshaun Watson is not only the team’s Week 1 starting quarterback, but he has been awarded that prestigious role after chastising a fan base for booing him after a preseason game in which he looked entirely adrift against the Bills’ backups. And in chastising the fans, Watson, for the 300th time since arriving in Cleveland in 2022, has, without any trace of irony, operated as if he had not become available via trade in the first place amid more than two dozen instances of alleged sexual assault or harrassment. 

There could have been a world in which the Browns recognized his absolute commitment to being the league’s most reprehensible figure at some point over the past half decade and, like any good clandestine intelligence agency, took the necessary steps to simply wipe the memory of Watson’s existence (and the pain of a trade so costly that it built another AFC Super Bowl contender), off the face of the earth. 

Cleveland opted to fire only the second head coach to take the franchise to the playoffs since its rebirth in 1999, bringing in Todd Monken to instill a no-nonsense, old-school aesthetic to a roster that contains several promising young players and, I’m guessing, make a legitimate attempt to squeeze something out of the Watson contract so it could tickle the galaxy brain ego of this front office constantly desperate to prove how smart it is.

Less than 10 days ago, Monken said of Watson: “I get all of the frustration by fans, himself. But for him to come back and work like he did is an unbelievable credit to him. And then to go out there, he was having fun today. And that is so cool.”

On Saturday, Monken said: “You don’t want to get booed? Let’s play good football. Let’s play good at quarterback, on offense and as a team …” 

On Sunday, Monken wrapped Watson back up in the protective cocoon he’s enjoyed for the majority of his adult life, suggesting that an instance of frustration at the podium is not who he is. This, while continuing to sand away the authentic, unfiltered honesty that earned him the head coaching job in the first place. 

Watson will now start the season against a Jaguars defense that finished second in the league in turnovers last season and follow that up with a matchup against Baker Mayfield, whom one anonymous Browns executive once suggested was not mature enough to be the signal-caller in Cleveland (before trading for Watson).

Whew.  

On a larger scale, the Watson issue is indicative of our times. We are hammered by a daily battering ram of information that points to the fair and obvious conclusion that most of the people dictating the flow of our daily lives have lost their minds. What was great about football and, for the most part, what is still great about football is that a fan base can get rowdy enough in person and on the internet to boo their way out of it; to topple the power structure. Owners still get embarrassed. And while it may not be the path to pragmatism, it’s a necessary lever to pull within the NFL’s own unique justice system when a situation has become totally untenable. 

Even after Cleveland’s current owner, Jimmy Haslam, called the Watson trade a swing and a miss, even after Watson proved that a new coach couldn’t save him (which, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought he may have been able to), even after five years of attempted character rehabilitation, he is still seen as the best option to start a season that general manager Andrew Berry positioned as the culmination of a “painful” two-year process to set the franchise up for “sustained success.” This feels like a CEO expecting you to believe that the layoffs you got caught up in really are for the greater good, if only we could see through our momentary frustration. 

People turn to conspiracy when Occam’s razor feels too sharp to swallow. In this particular instance, any Browns fan who has not already succumbed to pure madness is ready to burn the stadium down. (Ahhh … insurance money for the team’s new domed stadium? I may have nailed it.) 

Seriously, though, it’s a tipping point. It’s peak Browns because the team drafted two quarterbacks last year who aren’t remotely good enough to earn the job over Watson, who has been one of the worst statistical quarterbacks in the NFL since arriving in Cleveland. It’s peak Browns because Watson is telling his fans that they are wrong to be mad in spite of it all. Browns fans who gleefully arrive each week for mere scraps of competence, building a lifetime of barely satiated fandom out of the thought that, at some point, they can be proud of the product on the field. This is more than just a lovable, forgivable step on the rake. This is a team stoking and feeding the living, breathing nightmare that has plagued their dreams. This is a team donning its NWO cutoff and siding with the bad guys (without the obvious entertainment value).

All … for what? To bench Watson again if he plays poorly over the first two weeks of the season, so he doesn’t have to get booed by the same crowd again during the home opener? Weighted blankets are on sale this week. I’d suggest you grab one and dig in. Ugga mugga.