Albert Breer on SANDERS vs. WATSON as QB1, Bitonio’s Career, Sorsby Situation

You give Deshaun Watson a shot at the very beginning.

All right.

Welcome in to the Bree Report for Wednesday, June 10th.

We are now into mandatory minicamp week for a lot of teams, some more teams that have their mini camps next week, but we're effectively starting to wind down the spring here and head towards the summer break.

And so it's a little bit of a quieter time with some of the quarterback competitions heating up across the NFL.

We'll touch on one of those in a minute, but we're starting with what I think is the biggest news of the week.

Um, over the last couple of days anyway, and that's Joel Batonio after 12 years is retiring.

Um, this is one that, that slipped a little bit under the radar.

He was a free agent this offseason.

Um, but he said at his press conference on Tuesday that he knew coming into the 2025 season that this would probably be it for him, and it is indeed it.

Um, and look, this is one of the more accomplished, um, players that the Cleveland Browns have had since coming back into the league.

In 1999, he was a second-round pick in 2014, same draft class as he noted as Johnny Manziel.

And what he's accomplished since then is pretty remarkable.

He made seven Pro Bowls in his 12 years.

He was two-time first-team All-Pro, that was in 2021 and 2022, and he made second-team All-Pro three times.

So All-Pro 5 times in 12 years, um, very accomplished, almost certainly will be up in the ring of honor in Cleveland, but that's not .

Really what I want to focus on.

What I want to focus on is just sort of the integrity of the accomplishment for Joel Batonio and what he was able to do over the course of his 12 years.

He was a captain 6 times.

Um, and not only was he a captain in Cleveland, but he was somebody who really came to embody, um, what the organization wanted to be, struggled to become , um, how the city sees itself, um, you know, and I think in a lot of ways, you know, that embraced the city, that embrace of the market, the Northeast Ohio market.

Um, you know, really led him to have this desire to be a one jersey guy.

He clearly would have had an opportunity to go play somewhere else next year if he wanted to.

He could have chased a ring, but he really put a value in only wearing one helmet over the course of his NFL career, and that's a credit to him.

And to give you guys kind of some perspective on this and the tone that he set for the organization, I wanna give you two different examples of it.

The first to me would be um the losing that he endured and some of the ups and downs he endured.

And remember, he was there, he came into the league with Johnny Manziel, that was a couple of years after the Browns had drafted Brandon Weeden in the first round.

He was there for Baker Mayfield going first overall.

Um, you know, when he was drafted into the NFL, Mike Petton was the head coach, then, you know, he winds up working for Hugh Jackson, then Um, then, then Freddie Kitchens, then Kevin Steffansky, saw different general managers there, of course, was drafted by Ray Farmer, um, but worked under, under, under Sashi Brown's regime, um, and then later, John Dorsey, and finally, of course, Andrew Barry.

Um, and so I recall a conversation that I had with him.

Um, during the 2023 season, it really was kind of a magical run for the Browns.

They started fighting from quarterbacks that year.

Um, none of them started more than six games.

You might remember Joe Flacco came in to help lead them to the playoffs.

And, um, I had him on the phone, it was December of that year after one of their wins, and I asked him about the value of having accomplished this.

After everything that he'd been through, and, and, and what it meant to him to have taken on all the scars that Browns fans, Browns players, the city itself incurred over his years, and to be able to be part of a run like that.

And here's what he said.

He said, we've talked about it before, but I've been through brutal, some brutal stretches of losing games.

It makes football not fun.

You go through these moments, it is not what you're playing the game for.

It makes moments like this mean even more games like this where we're playing meaningful football in December, and hey, we, we win games we're going to play in January, we have a chance to keep playing football.

There were so many times in my career when I've been out of it in December and you're just trying to survive and trying to find Find a way to make it through the season.

Now, it's like we're trying to thrive here.

We're we're trying to make things happen.

Guys like David Njoku, Miles Garrett, even our long snapper, Charlie Hewlett, who've been here, who've been here with me for 10 years, these ones feel good.

And so, those were few and far between, of course, for, for Joel Batonio, but, you know, what I, I think I respect most about him is how he kept answering the bell for his team regardless of the circumstances.

It can be an example for everybody.

And I just look at some of the incredible numbers that are out there now.

He said in his press conference on Tuesday that, you know, coming into the league and having Joe Thomas and Alex Mack set the standard for him, those guys had outrageous, outrageous snap streaks.

Um, Joe Thomas actually wound up setting a record, played in over 10,000 consecutive offensive snaps.

Those were the torchbearers for, for Joe Batonio.

So, Had a little bit of an injury marred the first three years in the league after being a high second-round pick in 2014.

But over his last nine years, so that's 2017 to 2025, he only missed two games.

So he played in 147 of a possible 149 games, and at one point had a consecutive offensive snap streak of 6,481.

And again, like, that's impressive in a vacuum , but doing it despite having so many of those seasons circling the drain in December, playing for nothing, quote-unquote, nothing.

He wouldn't say it was nothing, but playing for nothing in the standings.

Um, again, just an incredible level of commitment, um, and an incredible value to, to the franchise, um, you know, as they've tried to, to build things up and, and you would hope you saw him address the team, um, you know, after, after practice on, on Tuesday.

The hope for the Browns would be for some of the younger guys who got a chance to be around him last year that he set a standard for them.

So, you know, those rookies from last year, your Mason Grahams, your Carson Schlesinger, your Harold Finnish, your Quinshaw Judkins, the Browns' hope, of course, would be that those guys would pick up the baton that Joel Batonio is now passing to them.

So happy trails to Joel Batonio, great career.

Um, our second topic is right there in Cleveland as well, and that's the quarterback competition.

You know, it's interesting listening to Todd Monk and their new head coach, talk about this and talk about what's ahead and really, um, you know, emphasize this is a two-horse race, means at least for now, Dylan Gabriel isn't part of, of , of the Derby to become the quarterback over the course of the next couple of months.

Um, and it's interesting that me to look at Todd Monken's past.

And you can go all the way back to, you know, his first foray in the NFL was in Jacksonville, and he was with David Garrard there as an offensive coach.

He was a receivers coach, but he was around them, was an offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State when Brandon Weeden, 2nd Brandon Weeden mentioned in this podcast or in this, in this show.

Uh, Brandon Weeden was the quarterback there.

Um, you know, he wound up going to, uh, to, to, to Southern Miss.

He became the head coach there.

Nick Mullins, who played for the Niners for a bunch of years, was the quarterback there.

He, of course, was with Jameis Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick in Tampa, goes to Georgia , he's with Stetson Bennett, goes to Baltimore, he's with Lamar Jackson.

The point is, he's been with a lot of different types of quarterbacks over the course of his career, and so he can build an offense for any type of quarterback.

So Deshaun Watson and Shado Sanders are now in the race to become the starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in the fall.

I personally think that if it's even, you give Deshaun Watson a shot at the very beginning, here's why.

You've already invested $230 million in him.

You've invested 3 first-round picks in him.

You've gotten almost nothing out of him over the course of his 1st 4 years there.

And so it'd be easy to look at that and say, well, sunk costs, we're moving on.

But what would be worse than sinking all of that and getting, sinking all that into him and getting nothing out of him.

would be if you don't give him a chance this year, and then he goes and balls out somewhere in 2027.

So if I'm ownership, if I'm Andrew Barry, I wanna make absolutely sure that that Deshaun Watson that I acquired, the guy who was a stud in Houston from 2017 to 2020 on the field, um, I wanna get one last look and make sure that there's nothing that I can harvest there.

So, if he does leave after the 2026 season, I feel a little better that I gave this every shot to, to, to, to see what I might have.

And by the way, I mean, this is still Deshaun Watson.

This is still a guy who was the 12th pick in the draft, who won a national championship at Clemson, who, you know, was one of the top 5 quarterbacks in the NFL at one point.

Um, I'd say there's a higher chance of Deshaun Watson elevating to that level than there is of the other two quarterbacks on the roster or the three quarterbacks on the roster, Shado Sanders, Dylan Gabriel, or Talent Green.

I mean, simply because we have the demonstrated history and we have the physical ability there .

Again, that doesn't mean Shado Sanders couldn't surprise everybody's a former fifth-round pick.

It just seems to me like it would be a little bit less likely.

And here's the other thing.

I do think you want to figure out, you know, I mean, if, if this is a 6 and 11, 5 and 12 type of year, I do think eventually you're gonna want to find out what you have in Shaor Sanders, and that'll inform what you do in 2027 at the quarterback position.

I'm just not sure that you need to do it from the rip.

And so, I think starting with Deshaun Watson, seeing what you've got, then going tohoor Sanders a little later in the year, makes the most sense if it's close.

If it's not, you just go with a better player.

And that's how you build credibility in the locker room if you're Todd Monk and they're gonna know if somebody has won the job outright, and if that happens, then of course, the decision is the the decision.

OK, our final topic for um today it's a couple of days old now, but on Monday, um, a district, the district court in In Texas, a judge by the name of Ken Curry, um, granted, uh, the, the, the, the application for an emergency restraining order, um, which is more commonly referred to as an injunction, um, for, uh, Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Soresby.

So, basically, what that means is the NCAA took his eligibility or revoked his eligibility as a result of the well-publicized gambling case.

Um, and now this, this court has ruled that while that civil case is in the court, um, that he can play.

And so he can rejoin his Texas Tech teammates and go forward.

The NCAA has appealed the ruling.

Um, they've asked for an expedited timeline.

As of right now, there aren't any other court dates until February when the season will be over.

Uh, a crazy case cause again, this is what Pete Rose was banished from baseball for.

This is why Pete Rose, who is one of the greatest hitters of all time, is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Um, and now you have Brendan Soarsby basically free to play, um, and basically in a position where he's gonna miss a game against Abilene Christian, he's gonna miss a game against Oregon State, and then presuming the NCAA.

Can't get the appeal heard fast enough, he'll be free to go forward and play.

Um, I don't need to get into the argument of how bad this is versus a domestic violence case or versus, I mean, there's just two different things.

That's, you know, with all respect to some of the more serious things from a human aspect, all that stuff is out there.

Those are more serious cases from a from just the the, the, the, the aspect of being a human being.

This from a competitive standpoint is a Cardinals sin.

And there's a reason why this has been treated as such over decades and decades and decades of organized sports.

You cannot bet on teams that you are a part of.

And that's what Brendan Soursby did at Indiana.

There's no gray area there.

He admitted to doing it, um, placed something around, somewhere around, or at least admitted to placing somewhere around 40 bets on the, the Indiana football team that he was a part of.

And I, I would say you start out with the fact that um this, um, I think For one thing.

Could wind up being what leads to the players in college football unionizing, which would simplify things from an NFL standpoint that it would create more rules, um , and maybe take some of the chaotic feel of college football away.

The reason why I say that is there's always been a reason for the players to unionize.

I think this is one of the first cases where the NCAA, which is the players did have a union, um, because if there's a negotiated set of rules, Then there's not really any gray area here.

Like there, uh, he's not winning the injunction.

I didn't think he was gonna win the injunction to begin with.

I think it's a crazy decision to begin with, um, and good, good on his lawyers for, for finding a way to, to, to win the case.

Um, but if, if, if there was a union that had negotiated this rule, these rules, we're talking about a different thing.

And I think the best way To kind of encapsulate that is to look back at the three-year rule.

And, you know, when I was growing up, I, there was always this perception that the minute a college freshman or a college sophomore challenges that rule, that rule is going away.

And Maurice Clorette and, and Mike Williams did wind up challenging that rule in 2004, and they wound up getting shot down because there was a set of work rules that was negotiated by the players with the league.

And the court didn't want to step in and get involved in a labor matter.

And so, uh, my, my, my, my guess would be this could be a step towards unionizing, which I think could help settle college football, which, of course, is gonna affect the NFL.

There are two other ways I think this could affect the NFL.

In the interim, I mean, this is basically a green light.

If you can get away with this, now, like how can the NCAA apply any of its rules?

And so, if an NFL team now um has a guy that's , um, like, let's say, I don't like where I was drafted, I'm a 5th-round pick.

I went through the spring with my team, I haven't signed a contract yet.

And this is just a uh a hypothetical idea.

What's stopping that kid from going back and signing a contract with the college team?

What's stopping him from re-entering college?

What's stopping a college team from signing a straight free agent who's out there right now, who's played 7 years in the NFL?

Um, I don't know if there's anything stopping them because they're really, uh, if the rules aren't enforceable, then things like that could happen.

And we've talked about college football being the Wild West for a long time.

Well, maybe now it's truly the wild West.

And if that's the case, like how do you draft players ?

Like if, if, if you look at a guy and say, OK, this guy's gonna be a 5th or 6th-round pick, but he was kind of iffy about leaving college in the 1st place, and maybe he doesn't want to live where we're at, do I not draft him now?

Um, the implications of this could be pretty wide-reaching.

And then, you know, there's the other piece of it, which is, um, just the optics and This is obviously gonna be a tough look for college football.

And when he does get back in the field, Texas Tech is the ultimate villain.

Brendan Soarsby is the face of all of this.

Um, you know, I believe that they play at the University of Cincinnati, which is where Brendan Soarsby transferred from in October.

I mean, is that gonna be Pete Rose night at Niper Stadium at the University of Cincinnati?

I mean, you're gonna see things like that when we get to the fall.

And I expect if he plays well, he's gonna be a very high draft pick.

And if he's a very high draft pick, then this story is gonna follow them into the NFL and it becomes an NFL story.

And what the NFL doesn't need with the amount of partnerships it has now with casinos and betting websites and all those different companies is for some of the hypocrisy of it, some of the entanglements of it being put in the spotlight.

And Sosby coming to the NFL after a successful 2026 season, after a high-profile 2026 season.

is going to have some ramifications for the NFL.

All right, that'll do it for today.

I appreciate you guys coming out.

As always, you can leave your comments and questions below here on the YouTube page.

You can also get to me on my social media at Albert Breer Twitter, at Albert R.

Breer on Facebook, at Albert_Breer on Instagram.

We will see you guys tomorrow with a mailbag edition of the Brewer Report.