Deshaun Watson will start for the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, November 15, when they host the Houston Texans, the team that drafted him. Head coach Todd Monken confirmed it on Wednesday before the team’s first full practice of the week, two days after he would not name a starter on Monday. Watson missed the 23-22 overtime loss in New Orleans while in the concussion protocol, and Shedeur Sanders started in his place.
Monken said keeping Watson in the job was always the plan. “Ultimately the full body of work. I mean the previous eight games that we had played, [Deshaun] played pretty well and that was my intention,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure we’d run it by the staff before I said it publicly. I don’t even know why I have to say it publicly, because it’s really only our business in terms of who’s going to play and who’s not going to play. But I mean, he played well enough to still be our starter.”
“I don’t look at it week to week and I don’t look at it long term”
Asked whether the decision was a long-term commitment to Watson, Monken said it was neither. “I don’t look at it either way. I don’t look at it week to week and I don’t look at it long term. I mean, we’re judged each week. I am. He is. Our team is,” he said. “I anticipate him being our starter. It’s what he’s been. He’s been our starter.” He added that he “had no intention of Deshaun not being our starter.” On who makes the call, he said, “Everything’s a collaborative effort, but ultimately I have to make the decision who the starting quarterback is.”
Monken said the team did consider every option, and he did not take anything away from Sanders. “Deshaun’s done a really good job for us. You know, five and three as a starter. He’s worked awfully hard to get back,” he said. “That’s nothing to take away from Shedeur, because I thought for 10 weeks of really not taking any reps, I thought he did a really good job, and there’s a lot of room for improvement with both of them.” He explained the Monday delay as timing. “When you come in on that Monday, you haven’t really even met as a staff. You’ve just gone through the film,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure we talked through as a staff, hey, there’s the way we’re going forward. That’s all it was. Really was pretty simple.”
Watson: “No, ma’am, it wasn’t”
Watson was asked whether there had ever been any question in his mind about starting. “No, ma’am, it wasn’t,” he said. Asked why Monken had left the door open on Monday, he said, “I have no idea. You have to ask about that. My job is to just come in every day and, you know, whatever is required for the day and go there.” Asked whether he is the starter for the rest of the season, he said, “That’s up to Monk and the front office. My job is to come in and win a day.”
He described the week of the concussion as new to him. He felt fine through Monday, reported symptoms on Tuesday morning, and was not cleared until late Saturday. “I never been in the concussion protocol, so it was all new to me,” he said. He said he was not disappointed to sit out in New Orleans after missing a full week of practice. “As a pro and as a vet, you know, I felt like I can go,” he said, but he called it the coaches’ and front office’s decision. On the sideline, he said, he tried to be “another voice, another ear” for Sanders, who “did a good job of putting us in a position to be able to try to win at the end.”
Facing the Texans before the bye
Watson called the game against Houston “a big opportunity for us” and said the history with his former team is behind both sides. “That stuff was in the past, you know, four, five years ago. Yeah, it was a big deal, but now, you know, I think both sides have moved on,” he said. The Browns are 5-4 after two straight losses, and their bye comes after Sunday’s game. “It’s very important to try to go into the bye with a W,” Watson said. Asked about the comments Jaquan Brisker made after the Steelers game two weeks ago, Watson said he did not know about them and had not heard from Brisker. “I got back up. I got back in the game. So, you know, it is what it is.”
Houston arrives at 3-5 after C.J. Stroud threw five touchdown passes in a 44-22 win over the Chargers. Monken said this is the fifth time in four years he has faced the Texans’ defense, and he called its edge rushers, including Will Anderson Jr., the players he has to keep from wrecking the game. “Feels like every week it’s like, can’t let this guy wreck the game. Can’t let this edge rusher wreck the game,” he said.
“Everything that I’m against”
Monken was blunt about the pre-snap penalties, most of them on the offensive and defensive lines and three on special teams. “It’s crazy because it’s everything that I’m against and yet it’s everything that we are,” he said. “So, you’re certainly going to fight like hell to get it fixed.” He said he would not bench starters over it. “They’re like our kids. We’re not going to just change out our kids,” he said. “They’re either going to buy into those type of things and the mental stamina that it takes … or we’re not going to be the team we can be.”
He also laughed off a pregame story that spread over the weekend, in which he told Sanders that some of the plays the quarterback wanted in his opening script were not in the Browns’ playbook. “It’s hilarious that it’s gone this far,” Monken said. “It should be important what a quarterback likes and what he doesn’t like. … I didn’t see it as any big deal. It really isn’t a big deal.”
No published comments yet. Start the conversation.