On his way off the field, for likely the final time as the Browns’ starter, a teary-eyed Jacoby Brissett bear-hugged a team staffer right outside the end zone. He then slowly made his way toward the tunnel, glancing up at the remaining fans. They stood and cheered for him. He gestured to cheer back at them. The rain was falling steadily now, Cleveland was still just 4–7, and none of it mattered—to the fans or quarterback—in the euphoria of an overtime win.
One of the first things he saw in the locker room, when he picked up his phone, still in his pads, was a text message from Deshaun Watson, who will take his job as of this morning. Watson, on the final day of his suspension for sexual harassment and sexual assault, expressed his appreciation for the job Brissett did.
From the new QB1 to those rain-soaked fans to the other 52 guys in that locker room to Kevin Stefanski and his staff, an appreciation for Brissett is what tied everyone at FirstEnergy Stadium together Sunday, following Cleveland’s 23–17 upset of Tom Brady’s Bucs.
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“He’s just a great dude,” Stefanski said in a quiet moment, about an hour after Nick Chubb’s touchdown plunge closed Tampa Bay. “I mean, that’s the simple answer. He’s very engaging. He’s very, very intelligent. He’s extremely supportive. I gave him a game ball after the game just because he’s a team guy. He’s such a great teammate, and it’s all the things that nobody sees that he does in the locker room.
“After-hours calling, texting guys video clips of plays. Those go unnoticed. Not by me, but those can go unnoticed. Well, I should say, they don’t go unnoticed by me or his teammates. And he’s just a truly supportive person. I spend a ton of time with him, and I don’t know that I’ve been around a better teammate in my time. He’s a Hall of Fame teammate.”
This, to be sure, has been a really weird situation in Cleveland. Back in March, the Browns signed Brissett as, more or less, a temp—Cleveland knew Watson would be suspended when they traded for him but didn’t know for how long. It wasn’t until summer that the 11-game penalty became official. From there, the Browns had to simultaneously juggle preparing Brissett for the first three months of the season, and Watson to be the quarterback for the next five years.
No one is shedding any tears for the Browns, of course. It was their choice to send a war chest of picks to Houston for Watson, then give him a historic, fully guaranteed contract. A lot of people are still upset about it. There will be people in Houston next Sunday, for sure, who will voice that displeasure, when Watson makes his Browns debut in his old home city, where most of the accounts of his sexual misconduct initially emerged.
All of it has left a lot of Browns fans conflicted. But on this weird, wet Sunday in northeast Ohio, they could close the book on one chapter of this saga with smiles on their faces. And that was thanks to Brissett.
We’re on location in Cleveland this week, and the long Thanksgiving weekend of Week 12 is nearly complete in the NFL. Here’s what we’re covering this Monday morning …
• Three Deep will dive first into the history Justin Jefferson is making, before we get to the Cowboys’ offensive line and Chargers coach Brandon Staley’s latest dice roll.
• Ten Takeaways kicks off with Philly’s scary run game, the Bills’ ability to take everyone’s best shot and where the NFL may take its act next internationally.
• Six From Saturday looks back at a Saturday showdown I’d rather forget.
But we’re starting in Cleveland, with the Browns, as the team turns the page and readies to start the Watson era.
Stefanski can’t say he’s stunned by what he’s seen from Brissett. There’s a reason the Browns were willing to pay him nearly $5 million for the year—and really the reason is that their research, in looking for something so specific to fill that job, brought them to him.
Yes, they liked him as a player. He is a scheme fit. He is big. He has a good arm. He is athletic. But all that accounted for only half of the equation.
“The second part, which is equally as important, is the cultural fit, knowing the situation we were gonna be in,” Stefanski says. “We knew Deshaun was gonna be suspended, or we were bracing for Deshaun to be suspended, but we didn’t know for how long Deshaun may be suspended. So to have a guy that has been in many situations in his career that you feel like have prepared him for this, going back to New England days, to his Indy days.
“He was in some unique situations. And then you start making phone calls—and I always call his former coaches, and they were just effusive in their praise. Like, they love the person.”
On Brissett’s side, things were considerably simpler—Cleveland offered him the chance to play. He didn’t know whether it would be for four games, six games or the whole season (nobody guessed 11, exactly). He just knew by signing with the Browns, after backing up in Indy and Miami the last two years, there would be the chance to get on the field.
“Didn’t know what it would look like, but I knew it was an opportunity that was gonna be there,” Brissett said, leaning against the wall in a stadium hallway postgame. “And that’s what it was. It was really an opportunity. Obviously, looking at the team, saw there was a good team, good coaches, and I looked forward to that.”
It didn’t take long for Brissett to make Stefanski and the Browns brass look sharp. There was one point in training camp, in fact, where Stefanski recalls Brissett loudly coming down on his offensive teammates, with Watson in there with the 1s. Normally, that wouldn’t be a place for a backup to do anything like that. But by then, Brissett was commanding enough respect to easily, and naturally, pull it off, impacting the guys around him along the way.
“He really lit into them and told them that it was unacceptable,” Stefanski says. “He’s the old man in the room, he’s not yet 30 and he’s gonna have to continue to provide that leadership moving forward. That’s such a big part of it.”
Adds Brissett: “I knew what it was when I signed up for it. And once the verdict came out, I knew what was gonna happen, obviously. So yeah, it’s not awkward for me.”
Jeff Lange/USA TODAY
And maybe most impressively, what could’ve been weird between the two quarterbacks—a circumstance where one guy is an 11-game stand-in, and serves in that role before the franchise player starts a single game for the team—never was.
“We’ve seen it over the course of time in football—starters and backups, there’s some tough rooms,” Stefanski says. “There’s some tough situations. This isn’t one of them because of the parties involved. This is a room of love and respect, and I’m lucky that I get to watch those guys work.”
Which is another reason why, well, this just sort of worked.
“His temperament has definitely helped,” veteran guard Wyatt Teller says. “I love Baker [Mayfield]. Baker was my guy. But Baker was a hothead, right? Jacoby is not. Jacoby is calm as they come. He does get excited a little bit. He can turn it on, but he’s very even-keel, very chill. But he’s a great leader.”
The kind, it turns out, the Browns were looking for.
Sunday’s scene in Cleveland was a weird one, for sure. When the tarp came off in the 10 o’clock hour, tire tracks were revealed—the result of some guy hopping a fence last Monday night or early Tuesday morning, finding a truck in the stadium with its keys in the ignition, and pulling through a tunnel and onto the field to do donuts on the playing surface (the Browns had to fill in the damage to even out the field). The rain broke closer to noon and gave way to bright, albeit temporary, sunshine. And the stadium, while plenty loud, had large, empty swaths of seats in the upper deck.
Those who did arrive in the rain, though, were there for a reason, thinking that maybe a team that hung in there through a 3–7 start—during which the defense, not the offense, was the problem—would build some momentum with Brissett in time for Watson’s return. Brissett, for his part, tried to focus on that Sunday morning.
He conceded to me that on the drive to the stadium is when some of the big-picture thoughts crept into his head. What’s the last impression I’m going make? Are we going to win? When will I get the chance to start again?
“But I told myself I was gonna be in the moment, that I can think about [the big picture] tomorrow,” Brissett says. “And then my real thoughts and emotions would probably come out.”
From there, the game went the way a lot of Browns games have this year. The offense came out like gangbusters. Brissett picked the Bucs apart underneath on the game’s first possession, connecting on his first four throws for 28 yards, before a bruising Nick Chubb run got Cleveland to the Tampa 31. From there, Stefanski called a reverse to Anthony Schwartz, and Brissett helped spring him for a 31-yard touchdown by pancaking Antoine Winfield Jr. downfield.
“That was pretty sweet,” Stefanski says. “Jacoby’s a big man, so we always tell him on some of these plays: If you’re out there, throw your weight around.”
After that came the kind of offensive lull the Browns have fought against all year—and that’s, again, where Brissett’s leadership showed up, as Cleveland huddled at the Bucs’ 46 with 2:10 left in the game, down 17–10.
“I always make this joke that if we played five-minute games, we’d win every week because we’re so good in those first plays,” Teller says. “But we were hitting this lull, and Nick was like, Look, we gotta score. This is the lull that we always hit. We have to score. And that was when Jacoby was like, Well, we’re gonna score.”
Six plays later, Brissett made the first of two throws that would win the game. This one was on fourth-and-10 from the Bucs’ 12 with 37 seconds left. At the line, he saw the Browns had split safeties, in a quarters look. Both tight end David Njoku and Brissett knew where the ball was going from the moment it was snapped.
“I saw two-high, and the route that I was running was down the middle,” Njoku says. “So I knew that the safeties had to respect the outside guys, and I was gonna be solo with the linebacker.”
After that, it was just a matter of Brissett putting the ball where only his guy could get to it, allowing Njoku to use his height advantage to take the ball away from Bucs linebacker Devin White.
The extra point tied it. Then, after overtime started with three punts, Brissett made good on a promise he made to Amari Cooper, to go back to him in a big spot after Cooper had a crucial fourth-down drop in the fourth quarter.
This throw came on third-and-4 from the Bucs’ 48, with 56 seconds left. Tampa, who had been playing zone to Cooper’s side all day, manned him up. Brissett saw it and, again, at the snap, was ready to go right to his star receiver.
Cooper put a double move on Carlton Davis. Davis fell. Brissett hit Cooper in stride thereafter, for 46 yards down the right sideline.
“When we broke the huddle, I saw [Davis] run over and I was like, Man, it’s the perfect coverage for Amari,” Brissett says. “I saw him get held up a little bit. I was surprised it wasn’t a PI call, and I was just like, Man, I know my guy’s gonna go down there and get it. We’re gonna connect.”
That set up first-and-goal from the 3. Chubb ran for no gain. The Browns called a timeout and could’ve just sent Cade York out to kick the game-winning field goal. Instead, Brissett simply said to his teammates, We’re gonna run that s--- again, and we’re gonna get it.
They did. Chubb scored. Ball game.
Privately, staff and players have expressed a lot of optimism over what they’ve seen in practice over the last few weeks—and what it’s going to mean for the team.
“Oh my God, I can’t wait,” Njoku says. “He’s a beast. That’s all I’m gonna say. I ain’t gonna get into any more detail. Can’t spoil it.”
Adds Teller: “You can’t stack the box, right? That’s what they’ve been doing against our run. They’ve been blitzing. Good luck. He’ll make you pay.”
We’ll see how that goes. For now, maybe the most significant thing, to me at least, about Njoku and Teller saying what they did is that they felt at liberty to say it at all. In other circumstances like this, a lot of times you’d have players keeping their cards close to the vest, so as not to make the outgoing starter feel uncomfortable or create any unwanted locker room drama. With Brissett, they don’t have to worry about that at all, because of who he is.
That’s why so many people were so happy for Brissett on Sunday as he, and the team, finished this step of the process of Watson’s becoming the team’s franchise quarterback.
“It's definitely something that has been publicized, right, and everything that was going on this offseason, to be able to have Jacoby come in, be the leader that he was, meant the world to the team,” Teller says. “Obviously I wish we won every game for him, but this one meant a lot to him, because he came up under Tom Brady, so to be able to beat your football dad, that would be like me coming in, and there was a guard that played with me and then beating him.
“He’s meant the world to us, but he’s not dying. He’s still gonna be on the team. He’s still gonna be a leader, and he’s still gonna be here.”
Brissett admitted to me that, while everyone says he’s still going to be a leader on the team, he still has to figure out exactly what that will look like as he trades his helmet in for a ball cap and clipboard over the next few weeks.
“I’ll be the same guy,” Brissett says. “Leadership, and whatever my role is. I don’t know what that’s gonna look like. So when we get back to work, excited to see that, and I’ll try to excel at that.”
Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports
And yes, he does hope he’s shown something to everyone else in the league, too—specifically, that he has a long career ahead of him as he closes in on 30 (his birthday is in two weeks).
“I’m a starting quarterback in this league—I can confidently say that,” Brissett says. “Hopefully, a team turns on the tape, and they watch and they see that. But, I mean, that’s the future, and I can’t think about that right now. I just gotta be where I’m at right now.”
This week that will mean helping get Watson ready to play the Texans, running the scout team and being the best teammate he can be. And that last part has been pretty important to the Browns over the last three months. My guess is that it will continue to be important.
