Charean Williams at profootballtalk.com on Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson’s play yesterday:
Browns coach Todd Monken said it was “cool” and “awesome” to watch Deshaun Watson play on Saturday. It was Watson’s first game of any kind since Oct. 20, 2024.
The quarterback, who is competing with Shedeur Sanders for the starting job, was 11-of-15 for 126 yards and lost a fumble in the first half. The Browns scored 10 points while Watson was in the game [for the first half].
He may have won the starting job.
I kind of doubt that. Neither Browns quarterback looked all that good to me. Watson didn’t throw a single deep pass. This may have been in part because he was having yet another health an issue, this time with his elbow.
Watson has played only 19 games since the Browns acquired him in a 2022 offseason trade with the Texans. He served an 11-game suspension in 2022, underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in 2023 and twice tore his Achilles, which kept him out 10 games in 2024 and all of 2025.
Watson, who turns 31 in September, said he had no problem with his Achilles. He experienced brief numbness in his forearm during the game.
“It was just my forearm and elbow,” Watson said. “Just a little numbness, but it went away as the game continued to go on. It was just a little funny bone thing.”
Sanders took the positives from the terrible interception that he threw but it was emblematic of his performance.
“What’d I see? The right read, just slipped. It was the right read, it just slipped,” Sanders said. “That’s what makes me mad a little bit. But any decision I make, I know is the right decision, I just didn’t execute the decision, but the right decision was made. So every day I look at my decision making. How’s my decision-making? That’s how I grade myself. Obviously turning the ball over is not great and I won’t survive a long time in the league doing that, but as long as my eyes and my feet and everything were in the right place, being able to execute, it just may happen.”
Sanders didn’t execute consistently and Watson continually settled for the short throw against a mostly vanilla Bears defense. I would call both quarterbacks mediocre at best under conditions where true NFL starters should have excelled.
It isn’t the only problem that they have. But the Browns problems are going to start at quarterback again this year unless one of these players gets a lot better.