Albert Breer on Watson QB1 in Cleveland, Jeanty Sprains Ankle, NFL to NCAA Dilemma

Todd Monken and his staff made the decision to go with Deshaun Watson as starting quarterback.

All right.

Welcome in.

It's the Brew Report for Monday, August 24th.

And we have big news on this Monday morning.

Deshaun Watson has been named the starting quarterback of the Cleveland Browns.

And for a lot of Browns fans , this is a pretty shocking result after we saw what we saw on Saturday afternoon in Cleveland , um, a rough, rough, rough afternoon for Watson.

Um, he didn't play very well.

I think most people would argue he reacted worse in the postgame press conference, um, basically conceding that it was personal between him and Browns fans after they cheered, um, him coming off the field with a torn Achilles a couple of years ago.

Um, and, you know, clearly Browns fans did not have a great reaction to him coming onto the field.

And I think there's important context here too.

There were probably less than 15,000 people in the stands on Saturday when Deshaun Watson entered the game in the 3rd quarter.

Those fans had also Um, ridden out a, a thunderstorm that delayed the start of the game in Cleveland.

A weird afternoon there.

Again, uh, uh, a not good performance on the field from Deshaun Watson, a bizarre postgame press conference where it almost felt like he was declaring war against the fans.

And I think like most people over the weekend, um, my opinion on this situation did change a little bit.

I was pretty certain going into Saturday that Watson was gonna be the starting quarterback.

And coming out of um all of that, I wondered if they could keep him on the team.

And I really felt like coming out of that, they had two choices, start him or cut him.

And I know a lot of people have talked about the cap implications and everything else , but I just didn't see a scenario where you could have Deshaun Watson on the roster as the backup.

Mostly because if you went with Shaddo Sanders, and then all of a sudden, he gets injured or he doesn't play very well, can you turn to him if Sanders gets hurt?

Like, is that an untenable situation for the rest of your team if now Watson is entering the game.

So, you know, it, it felt to me like the decision was either get him off the roster altogether or make him your starting quarterback.

Uh, now, with a little more time to take a deep breath and look at the situation.

You know, I do think that Todd Monken was looking at the, the full body of work here and what it looked like in the spring and what it looked like through training camp.

And this wasn't Deshaun Watson running away with the job, but I think it was pretty clear to most of the people who Were involved in Cleveland, and then we're able to evaluate it from, from afar, that Deshaun Watson was probably the best option for the team at quarterback to start the season at the very least.

I heard that from Bears people who went against him in week one of the preseason.

I heard that from some Bills people who were at the practice last week when the two teams worked together, um, last Thursday, and So I think you start, you, you, you heard that over and over and over again that Watson was just ahead of Sanders.

Um, you know, and I think some of this comes down to the fit and, and what Todd Monken is looking for in his quarterback.

Um, the offense that they're planning on running and the way Todd Monken runs this offense, he gives the quarterback a lot of responsibility and a lot of command at the line, that puts a premium on experience.

Deshaun Watson not only has experience in the league, but he has experience running an offense from the line.

Um, he had a lot.

of that responsibility working with Bill O'Brien from 2017 to 2020 in Houston.

And that's part of why Brown's people felt like Deshaun Watson was starting to look like himself, was starting to feel like himself, and really what it was gonna come down to was, can he be more consistent?

And the consistency started to get better over the course of time in training camp where I think the decision started to become clear.

And then Saturday, of course, everything went off the cliff.

But, again, with some time to digest everything, with some time to take a step back and take the full body of work into account on Monday morning, Todd Monken and his staff made the decision to go with Deshaun Watson as the starting quarterback.

They just felt like he was a little bit better, he was a little bit more consistent, he'd be a little bit better for the other 10 guys in the huddle at the very start of the season.

Um, so he sat down with both guys.

Both guys took the news well.

Obviously, if you win the job, you're gonna take the news well.

That's the Watson side of it.

You know, they, they, they also said to Shador, and they emphasized to Shador, you gotta play the long game here, you're coming along, you're making progress.

Don't let this derail you.

Uh, my understanding was Shador was smiling in the meeting and, and, and Shador said that he got it and that he understood.

Um , and that's good entrepreneur who I think has handled a lot of these things over the last couple of weeks pretty well for a young guy.

So, um, Deshaun Watson, starting quarterback and, and, and one of the nuances here, of course, and we've talked about this over the last couple of weeks, and I think it's an important piece of it is that what we saw on Saturday, Deshaun Watson isn't gonna have to, have to walk into that, um, on September 13th because the Browns open the season in Jacksonville and they go to Tampa in week two.

And so, you know , I think we've, I think what, what almost certainly happens here is everybody's revisiting this after you get through those first two games.

And so, how does Watson play against Jacksonville?

How does Watson play against Tampa, where by the way, there's gonna be another one of these storylines because the quarterback that Watson was brought in to replace, Baker Mayfield, of course, is the Buccaneers quarterback.

Um, if Watson doesn't play very well and they start 0 and 2, they certainly can pivot to Shado Sanders.

I think that would be relatively easy to do.

If they're 1 and 1 or 2-0 and Watson's playing well, I think that softens the blow.

There's been some time to separate what happened on Saturday from that third game against Carolina on September 27th, and then you're able to manage it a little differently.

And I think that that's a piece of this too is It's a lot easier if it doesn't work to go from Deshaun Watson to Shado Sanders than it would be to ever go from Shado Sanders to Deshaun Watson.

I don't think you're gonna have Deshaun Watson on the team as a backup.

Even if you did, I think it would be tough to manage that and then go away from Shaddo and to Deshaun Watson, you know, that would pretty much be it for Shador.

And when Shador gets in, if that does happen in week 5, week 10, then I think Shador gets the rest of the year.

So, I think just looking at the big picture of this.

Um, as much as, as much as it sucks for Browns fans to have had to go through the weekend they went through, and trust me, I think it's maybe the best fan base in the NFL for being as loyal and passionate, and yet angry, um, and engaged as they have been, um, through all of the failure of the last three decades.

Um, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I think it, it, this, this is probably the plan that gives you the best chance of success at the quarterback position in 2026, and I think that was the case before everything that happened on Saturday.

I think it probably remains the case.

It gives you a shot.

To see both the quarterbacks, um, with the likelihood, of course, that the quarterback for 2027 isn't on the roster right now.

All right, our second topic for today, Ashton Genty suffered a sprained ankle, um, over the weekend, and this could have been a lot worse.

Um, you know, like the reports out of Vegas were that, uh, he was carted off, that his teammates looked a little shaken by what had happened.

Um, Uh, you know, you start to think of the big picture implications, but I think it does bring up an interesting topic of what this means for the development of Fernando Mendoza.

And part of why you take Ashton Genti, if you're John Spytek in 2025 is the idea that you will eventually pair him with a young quarterback.

And we've talked about this with Jeremiah Love in Arizona and how he could eventually pair with the young quarterback next year.

Well, that's where the Raiders are now with Ashton Genty and Fernando Mendoza coming in.

The hope, of course, being The genie could be for Mendoza, what Dak, what, what Zeke Elliott was for, for Dak Prescott, what Todd Gurley was for Jared Goff back in the day.

You take the if you have an effective run game, and a bell cow back who can catch the ball out of the backfield, taking the pressure off the quarterback, you're giving him an outlet for easy completions.

You do a million different things if you got a really, if you've got an elite back, um, you know, with your young quarterback, you do a million things for your young quarterback with that, so.

Um, you know, I, I, I think if you want a big picture of this, and, you know, we'll see what the timetable is for his return.

Um, but I think that this does at least change the timetable a little bit with Fernando Mendoza.

And, and what I mean by that is where the Raiders are right now, as far as playing Mendoza, of course, it's going to relate back to Mendoza's own readiness and And how ready he is to step in and run an NFL huddle and run Clint Kubiak's offense and how he's gone through, it's a very regimented process of learning the position within that offense, but it's also gonna be about the team's readiness to support him.

And so what is the offense around the quarterback look like?

If you take Kirk Cousins, Fernando Mendoza out of it, what can the other 10 people in the huddle do to to to do to support the quarterback?

So how's Colton Miller playing?

How's the rest of that offensive line look with guys like Jackson Powers, Johnson, Tyler Linderbaum, obviously a huge addition, DJ Glaze.

How do those guys look?

Brock Bowers, you know, like, can he be the number one?

One target since you don't have a real number one receiver.

What does the receiver group look like with young guys like Malik Benson having shown some promise, and then, yeah, what does the run game look like?

Are you able to run the ball the way that a Clint Kubiak offense would idealize running the ball?

Um, if you can run the ball effectively, you can support your young quarterback more by managing down in distance situations by taking the pressure off of him, by giving him again that outlet, um, that a, uh, uh, a, a good pass-catching running back can be.

Um, so, Genti is a huge part of the equation when it comes to getting Mendoza on the field.

So his timetable is important because I think it could wind up affecting when we, when we see, uh, Mendoza get out there on the field.

Finally, our third topic for today, this is back to the Browns, but this isn't really a Browns topic.

So, The Browns are waiving Dayquan Wright.

He'll hate the waiver wire if he winds up clearing waivers, and this guy was a 2nd team all SEC tight end last year at Ole Miss under Lane Kiffin.

He was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Eagles.

He was cut by the Eagles on August 10th.

The Browns brought him in on August 11th, which is a little under two weeks ago now.

The Browns got a look at him.

They're letting him go now.

He has an agreement in place to sign.

With LSU to sign with the LSU Tigers.

And this is the can of worms opening that we were all fearful.

Would, would manifest after what we've seen happen in basketball now and the wild west that exists in college sports.

And there's a reality to this where this is very much now gonna become an NFL issue.

What happens with a guy like Dayquan Wright if he goes back and has a great year at LSU?

Um, is he a free agent then in the spring, or does he go back into the draft?

Uh, I, like, I don't know.

I would think that he would just be a free agent, but, you know, we'll see what that means.

Um, you know, more and more immediately over the next couple of weeks when guys get, you know, released, are they gonna be deciding between joining practice squads or going back to college.

Um, it is a wild west scenario and there are two points that I will make on it.

Number 1, There isn't, there is a public enemy number one here , and it is former NCAA president Mark Emmert.

They had decades to take care of this.

For decades, we all knew the players in college football and college basketball were going to get paid.

It was no secret that train had been coming down the tracks for a long time and accordingly, the powers that be had a long time to work out something with the players.

Instead, they all sat on their hands.

They all kept collecting checks.

And for their own enrichment, they let this train wreck happen right in front of their faces, and now, it's in the hands of the courts.

And now, you're seeing situations like this where players are playing by rules that they did not negotiate, which is allowing for them to win cases in court, which is allowing them to do whatever the hell they want.

Um, it is destructive for college football and has been for a couple of years, and now it's gonna hit the NFL, which brings me to my second point.

The NFL needs to be proactive here.

The NFL, the people who run the NFL, I'm not even sure they're cognizant enough of what an unbelievable resource college football is for them.

College football gives them a free farm system.

College football gives them a developmental.

Arm that essentially turns guys into stars.

And so those stars are now put on the stage of the draft and make the draft popular, right?

And that's why the draft is popular.

Make no mistake about it.

The reason why The NFL draft is so popular because we know who all these guys are.

These guys have all become stars at the college level.

It's not because the NFL is king, it's because college football is so popular, and so, when we get to April every year, we have heard of the players that are going into the NFL draft.

Just look at the NBA draft, it became less and less popular when there were more and more names that we didn't.

that we, that we weren't familiar with when college basketball became less popular because more guys were just spending a year in college, 2 years in college , and you had, you know, more players coming from overseas.

The NBA became less the NBA draft became less popular because we were less familiar with those names.

The reason the NFL draft is so popular, a huge reason why is because of the popularity of college football.

You know, and then there's the third piece of it, which is, it's another huge platform for the sport.

High school football, college football, NFL football are all enormously popular.

The NFL is obviously king, but it helps the NFL that people are watching.

The game at every level.

College football is a golden goose for the NFL and the NFL has not shown a real willingness the last few years to work with college football.

You see the way they're, they're, they're bigfoot in the college football playoff, um, with the broadcast windows in December.

They need to start working with college football to help them find solutions because it behooves them to do so.

It, it is, it is vital that they, that they do their best to try to take care of college football and try to get the train back on the tracks at that level and see if they can help those guys work to an agreement that is, that is going to be beneficial for the players, that is gonna be beneficial for the.

College programs and then as a result, winds up being really good for, for, for the NFL.

And I, I know one former NFL executive, the, the, the, the, the PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolla was in on trying to do that through his relationships with the networks and I think it behooves the NFL to get in on this now because Dayquan Wright will not be the last one.

And I think there's a good chance in the next couple of weeks, we've got guys again, choosing between the Jaguars practice squad, the Panthers practice squad, and the Oregon Ducks, or the Jets practice squad, the Colts practice squad, or the Indiana Hoosiers, call it whatever you want.

Um, those sorts of situations are not good for the NFL, and I think it would behoove the NFL to get on top of it fast.

Appreciate you guys coming out.

As always, you can get to me on my YouTube page here, comment down below, or you can get any comments, questions, whatever you got to me on social media at Albert Breer on Twitter, at Albert Aubrey on Facebook, at Albert_Breer on Instagram.

Appreciate you guys coming out.

We have a couple more of these coming for you this week.

We'll see you guys then.