The Browns, no strangers to embarrassment, reach a new low naming Deshaun Watson starting QB

Every team has some level of optimism coming into the season. Then there's the Cleveland Browns , who voluntarily signed up for having their starting quarterback booed mercilessly throughout their home opener.

The Browns know embarrassment. They haven't won a division title since 1989. They went 0-16 in 2017, a year after going 1-15. Their list of quarterbacks since returning to the NFL in 1999 is so long and treacherous, it became a running joke .

And Monday brought a new low, even for the Browns.

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Deshaun Watson will be the team's starting quarterback in Week 1, the Browns announced. Shedeur Sanders , a younger player who definitively outplayed Watson in the second preseason game, will be the backup. Watson got booed by the home fans Saturday, then waged war with them for it , calling them disrespectful and bringing up fans cheering his Achilles injury. Despite all of that, the Browns chose Watson.

In truth, it was never a competition. We found that out Monday. Someone in the Browns decided long ago that Watson would start. They started a media blitz to ease Browns fans into that idea last December. He was going to start even though in March 2025, team owner Jimmy Haslam called the Watson trade a "big swing and miss." Nothing has changed since then. But Watson, the very definition of a sunk cost, will start the season.

Sorry, Browns fans. You deserve better than this.

Watson didn't take it well when he was booed after an interception Saturday. He said fans held a personal grudge against him. It was personal, to a degree. But he missed the point, as he has done repeatedly throughout his Browns career.

Browns fans weren't just booing Watson, with his long and sordid off-field history and the trivia answer to "worst trade ever" and also "worst contract ever." They were booing the franchise itself.

There's no logical world in which Watson should be starting Week 1. He's 30 years old. He has never played well in Cleveland. There's no trade value to be salvaged. He is obviously fed up with Cleveland, and Cleveland is fed up with him. When Browns fans booed Watson, part of that had to be letting ownership, the front office and the coaching staff know they did not want Watson playing anymore. They were done. It was a revolt. They are smart enough to know that the Browns should have moved on, even though the franchise itself didn't seem to get that.

Browns fans voiced their displeasure Saturday. They were spit on by the franchise with Monday's decision.

And if Watson thought he was booed in the preseason, just wait until their home opener in Week 3.

Browns have been setting this up for months

The weird part about the Watson ordeal is that the Browns acted like there was a competition when there now obviously wasn't. Sanders completely outplayed Watson last weekend, but afterward Browns head coach Todd Monken twisted himself into a pretzel to justify the predetermined decision to pick Watson.

"I'm not going to let one half of football, one frustrating moment dictate what our decision is going to be that we think is in the best interest of the Browns moving forward and especially Week 1," Monken said Sunday , via Cleveland.com, after Watson played miserably.

That let everyone know that Watson would be the starter. Monken was stuck in a position in which he had to justify the move even though results didn't back it up. It became official Monday, though it's clear the decision was made well before then.

The weird part about it all is Monken told 92.3 The Fan that he had no problem with fans booing Watson, saying, "The business we are in is a performance-based business." Watson has done absolutely nothing, in terms of performance, to get the starting job.

But the Browns have been laying the tracks for this since before last season even ended.

The gaslighting of Browns fans started Dec. 6, when ESPN's Adam Schefter and NFL Media's Ian Rapoport both reported Watson would be back with the Browns (that was before ESPN and NFL Media merged). The news came absolutely out of nowhere about a player who didn't play last season. It came well before the team hired Monken, as well. Then after that there were glowing reports about Watson. In late April, Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com reported that Watson had emerged as the favorite to start, even though the offseason program really hadn't even begun. There was a long ESPN piece about Watson's redemption that included the premise that he held "no ill will" toward Cleveland, though we found out Saturday he still did. When Watson played decently in the first preseason game, Monken went out of his way to say Watson was "awesome" and "functioned at a high level" even though everyone could see otherwise.

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The Browns naming Watson the starter Monday was a decision that seemed to have been made more than nine months ago when they started trying to acclimate Browns fans to the idea Watson would be in their lives another season. That's beyond strange. It's a move with no upside that is agitating a proud and loyal fan base. They floated trial balloons on the move of starting Watson, the fans let the team know they hated the idea, and the Browns went through with it anyway.

It's not that Sanders is a great option, but there's no reason to start Watson. And while teams shouldn't make a decision based on fan reactions, naming a starting quarterback who just waged war with the fan base is stunning. It's an impossibly confounding move by a franchise that won't be good this season but could have at least avoided harassing its supporters.

The factory of sadness has never been sadder.