By now you know the story. After he faced more than 20 allegations of sexual misconduct, the Cleveland Browns sold their franchise’s soul to go all-in on the disgraced Deshaun Watson last spring. For a fleeting moment, you thought it might even work out for Watson in Cleveland, as his situation made a mockery of the NFL’s disciplinary system.
Eight games into his Browns career, Watson looks like a shell of the player Cleveland was willing to set aside all of its principles for. After a catastrophic knee injury for Nick Chubb Monday night, it’s about to get a lot worse before it (ever) gets better.
Given the severe nature of Chubb’s injury, he will officially miss the rest of the regular season. His absence will leave a Grand Canyon-sized chasm of offense in Cleveland’s backfield. You don’t just replace players like Chubb, who has rushed for at least 100 yards in 30 of 77 career games. Losing a player like Chubb means reorganizing your entire offense on the fly. He is a vintage backfield bell-cow of the highest order — a player that teams like the Browns build their entire schemes around.
To state the obvious: This is a problem for both the Browns and for Watson’s attempt at the NFL’s least-coveted “redemption” arc.
Without Chubb to lean on, the Browns will now ask Watson to carry the brunt of their offensive load. This is the same Watson who has amassed one of the worst cumulative expected points added (EPA) and completion percentages over expected (CPOE) since taking his first snap with the Browns. There’s an argument to be made that he’s the NFL’s worst starting quarterback right now, and it isn’t even close. What good is having Amari Cooper and David Njoku as pass targets if they can’t get the ball?
This is also the same Watson who gifted the hated Pittsburgh Steelers not one but two “gimme” defensive touchdowns in arguably the biggest professional football game for Cleveland in the 21st century. Instead of helping put the Browns back on the AFC’s map, Watson did his best 2018 Carson Wentz impression (packaged with the inexplicable yips and all). And he wasted no time doing it:
.@STEELERS PICK-6 ON THE FIRST PLAY 👀
📺: #CLEvsPIT on ABC
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/zWM8hlwLFw pic.twitter.com/qrdHkRoZHK— NFL (@NFL) September 19, 2023
Then, in an embarrassing attempt to salt away a crucial road victory over a divisional opponent, Watson spontaneously combusted in the waning moments of a 26-22 defeat that had his fingerprints all over it:
ANOTHER HIGHSMITH AND WATT COMBO. TOUCHDOWN STEELERS.
📺: #CLEvsPIT on ABC
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/zWM8hlwLFw pic.twitter.com/3T15PdcCSI— NFL (@NFL) September 19, 2023
After their brazen display of prioritizing winning football games above all else, the Browns now face a worst-case scenario.
Without Chubb, they no longer have easy offense to lean on. Running backs who average more than five yards per carry over half a decade don’t grow on trees. Watson will be their default life preserver — a reality the Browns once had to feel confident about before his game lost every aspect of its electricity. There’s no snap, no charge to his atrocious Browns’ passing offense, which is 26th in total yards through two games and somehow only has a higher yards-per-pass-attempt than rookie Bryce Young’s Panthers and the Bengals’ Joe Burrow on precisely one healthy calf. There’s bleak and grim and hopeless in this silly sport. Then there’s Watson plumbing the depths of atrocious quarterback play after receiving nearly a quarter-billion dollars in guaranteed money.
In the next two months, Watson’s fledgling Browns will square off with Mike Vrabel’s scrappy Tennessee Titans, two bona fide Super Bowl contenders in the Baltimore Ravens (twice!) and San Francisco 49ers, an upstart Indianapolis Colts squad led by the promising Anthony Richardson, and Pete Carroll’s rising Seahawks in Seattle all before the Steelers visit Cleveland in mid-November to flatten Watson like a pancake (again). There is a very feasible reality where Cleveland has just two or three wins by December. That is decidedly not how the Browns thought their Watson era would unfold.
Nothing Watson has “achieved” with the Browns suggests he’s prepared to elevate them in this impossible moment. He is somehow less of a (positive) difference-maker than noted franchise talents like Zach Wilson and Justin Fields. But the New York Jets and Chicago Bears aren’t nearly as invested in their current quarterbacks’ respective futures as the Browns are with Watson. Everything says Watson is about to recklessly drive them off a cliff like best friends Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis taking an impromptu road trip. Except this tale will not contain any of the wacky hijinks of a beloved cinematic classic.
The worst part for the Browns is that they have no eject button. They traded three first-round picks for a quarterback with a $63.9 million salary cap hit in each of the next three seasons. That is not a typo. Watson’s contract will indeed carry more weight on the Browns’ books than Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Justin Herbert for each of their teams well into the 2020s. Barring some gold-medal-winning financial gymnastics, Cleveland is effectively locked into an extended future of expensive and horrendous quarterback play at the same time. While the Browns are probably accustomed to the latter outcome, years of incompetence under center couldn’t have possibly prepared them for Watson wasting their time and money.
It took all of eight starts for the Watson trade to blow up in the Browns’ face. Their humiliation is likely only just beginning.
