The Future Is Now? Why the Browns Should Be Aggressive at Quarterback This Trade Deadline

On Tuesday, Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson self-reported emerging concussion symptoms that he was initially checked for in the first quarter of Sunday’s blowout loss to the Steelers. This means that on Sunday against the Saints, Cleveland needs to draw from its reserves and turn to a quarterback—possibly Shedeur Sanders—that the team avoided turning to after a summer-long competition.

Outside of Cleveland’s first-year head coach, Todd Monken, clearly seeing Watson as the better player out of camp (even though Watson has had some encouraging big-game moments this season, he is 28th in ESPN’s all-encompassing total QBR quarterback rating, 20th in EPA per play, 17th in success rate per down, 17th in completion percentage over expectation and 27th in air yards per pass), turning to Sanders risks the chance of activating the Sanders hive, which is a curious group of delusion-seekers adamantly tied to the idea that Sanders is the Browns’ answer at quarterback. This despite a small but alarming sample size in which Sanders was one of the NFL’s worst quarterbacks and a major negative outlier in both interception-worthy and uncatchable throws last year. While I’m not saying the Browns have much of a choice this weekend, as Sanders has been operating as the No. 2 quarterback on the depth chart, and I’m not ruling out the idea that Sanders, like many players, got better, I am saying that Cleveland has a more consequential choice it needs to make as we approach next week’s trade deadline.

In my dream trades column last week, I suggested Cleveland make a call on Spencer Rattler (which was unpopular). This was not for Rattler to immediately unseat Watson but to confront the three-headed monster the Browns are looking at right now:

• Watson is playing serviceable football but not great football.

• Watson has an injury history and holds the ball for a painfully long time. He is the only quarterback in the NFL to be sacked eight times in a game this season, and it happened twice. Watson is the most-hit quarterback in the NFL, at 63 hits through eight weeks. And, while he’s gotten his snap-to-throw time down, he can’t seem to shake himself of the habit of elongating certain drop-backs and buying himself false time in the pocket. His injury history alone should be a red flag for future issues at the game’s most important position.

• Cleveland is 5–3 and in the thick of the AFC North race, with three winnable games against the Saints, Texans and Raiders coming up, with the bye mixed in. I’m mentioning the bye because it would give Cleveland time to ramp up a veteran acquisition at the trade deadline.

Press this all against the backdrop that Cleveland is heavily invested in its young core: Harold Fannin Jr., Denzel Boston, KC Concepcion, Quinshon Judkins, Spencer Fano, Carson Schwesinger, Jared Verse and more. Turning to Watson first was a pivot toward the anti-tanking position. As someone who believed Cleveland was destined for the No. 1 pick at one point, after a blowout season-opening loss to the Jaguars, I consider my altered stance a compliment that Andrew Berry has indeed nailed the past two draft classes. But that compliment also comes with the call to realize what Berry, and every overly analytical iteration of the Browns’ front office since the Sashi Brown era, has failed to realize: Projections on spreadsheets are simply that. All that you have is what exists in the moment. This team is good enough right now to win the AFC North. They deserve a quarterback commensurate with that reality. Or, at the very least, a better option at QB2 (the overly analytical nature of the Browns, which caused the franchise to supermaxx the Ron Wolf take a quarterback every year mantra and left them with a troika of rough developmental projects incapable of winning games right now, is an interesting piece of this subplot).

However, in choosing Watson, who, again, was one of the worst quarterbacks in football over the past five seasons, over Sanders this summer, it says all the team needs to say both about its intentions and its thoughts on the roster. Sanders was not good enough to merit long-term starter consideration then. What changed over the past eight weeks as the team looks toward a slate of winnable games?

Former Brown Jacoby Brissett has already been dealt to the Ravens, but former Brown Jameis Winston is still available. I’d bet that as much as the Raiders want Kirk Cousins to complete the season, a third-round pick would make the conversation worth having. And for those who think it’s ridiculous to mortgage the future, I will remind everyone, especially Browns fans, that the theoretical future you have been promised for decades has largely existed in the imagination of the team’s front office. Every teardown. Every lost season. Every strategically restructured contract. It’s a house of cards: The following season half of these players will be hurt, some of them will decline, a coach will depart and the player’s skills will be lost in a new system—there is no clean ascent in the NFL. Just ask Brian Thomas Jr. and C.J. Stroud. With the draft a total uncertainty, maybe this is at least a chance to find the team’s bridge starter for 2027.

Again, I realize that this is a far cry from where I was at the beginning of September: going from the Browns’ organization is bad enough that I wonder if Arch Manning would avoid them in the draft, to this Browns team as it stands right now, is good enough that it should be quarterback hunting at the trade deadline. I’m not obtuse enough to dig in on a failed position.

And I hope the Browns can do the same. Their moment is now, not somewhere in the ether. Maybe Sanders will dissuade them from looking any further with a strong performance against a Saints defense that allowed a week’s worth of yards and points to J.J. McCarthy in 10 minutes of one fourth quarter. Maybe that’s good enough for some people. But it’s not for Schwesinger, Concepcion, Boston, Fannin and Judkins. Give them a chance to whiff the kind of playoff football you plan on seeing for the next decade in your best-laid plans.

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