Monken makes the call
Two days of hedging are over. The Cleveland Browns announced on Wednesday morning that Deshaun Watson will start Sunday’s home game against the Houston Texans, the franchise that sent him to Ohio.
On Monday, head coach Todd Monken would not commit either way. He wanted more time to see Watson in practice. He took it, and the answer was the veteran.
Watson missed last Sunday’s trip to New Orleans. He had been cleared from the concussion protocol on Saturday, but Cleveland kept him inactive and went with Shedeur Sanders, most likely because Watson had barely practiced that week.
no renewal
Free for 2 weeks.
Sanders made it a tough decision
Sanders did not make the choice easy. He threw for 297 yards and two touchdowns on 19-of-31 passing in New Orleans and led a fourth-quarter drive that tied the game and forced overtime. The Saints still won it 23-22 in the extra period.
That loss dropped Cleveland to 5-4. Every one of those five wins came with Watson starting, as he went 5-3 over the first eight weeks. He also owns five fourth-quarter game-winning drives this season, and that kind of late-game record is hard for a coach to bench.
Watson earned the job in the first place by beating Sanders in a quarterback competition that ran from the offseason into the start of training camp. It was his comeback year after two surgeries on his Achilles.
A season that finally looks normal
The context matters. Cleveland gave up first-round picks in 2022, 2023 and 2024 to land Watson from Houston in March 2022, then handed him a fully guaranteed $230 million contract. A suspension at the start of his Browns tenure and a run of injuries followed. Before this year, he had never played more than seven games in a season for Cleveland.
Now he gets the Texans, sitting at 3-5, with the Browns trying to stay above .500.
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