Cleveland Browns insider Mary Kay Cabot favored the choice of Deshaun Watson as the quarterback to start the 2026 season. Watson, who enters the final year of his five-year, $230 million contract, edged Shedeur Sanders in the race during the preseason. Cabot said the Browns have to find out what Watson can give in his final year before eventually moving on.
However, Cleveland commentator Roberto Shenanigans on Tuesday had a polarizing view of Cabot's thoughts. After seeing Watson appear in only 19 games during four seasons, the X account can't understand why the Browns still want to have a look at him.
"WHY!? Why do the Browns have to see what Watson has left in 2026? He's been hot garbage for 4+ years. WHY?" Shenanigans wrote on X.
Regarding the choice of Watson as starting quarterback, Cabot said:
"You have to see. This is the big unknown. He hasn't played in 22 months, and you have to find out what does he have, what's left in that tank, what's left in the legs, what's left in the arm. Again, I've seen flashes of it."
In March 2022, Cleveland surrendered a lot of draft capital to trade Watson from the Houston Texans in the first place. They then handed him a five-year contract extension worth a fully guaranteed $230 million.
In his first season, Watson appeared in just six games after serving an 11-game suspension. In 2023, he played only six games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury. After playing seven games in 2024, he suffered a ruptured right Achilles tendon in October 2024. He suffered a setback during recovery, leading to the quarterback missing the whole of the 2025 season as well.
As a result, the Browns got little return on their investment in Watson.
Deshaun Watson struggled in the preseason game against the Buffalo Bills and heard the crowd at Huntington Bank Field boo him. The quarterback called out fans whom he felt reveled in the quarterback's ruptured Achilles in Oct. 2024.
Watson later apologized for his reaction. Meanwhile, Browns coach Todd Monken also shared his thoughts on the whole saga, seeing it as just a minor "speed bump."
"During the game and then after the game, certainly, Deshaun was not in a great headspace," Monken said on 92.3 The Fan. "I looked at it more along the lines of a speed bump, just a blip on the radar, more than the norm of what I had seen over the course of the five months being here, in terms of his confidence, how hard he's worked to get back to where he's at today."
Monken also revealed that right after that preseason game, Watson came to meet him and talked about the incident with raw honesty.
"He came to me right after that, him and I had a good conversation. He said, 'I'm not sure I handled that the right way, but I did have things that were on my heart.' And I asked him, I said, 'Do you feel like you've gotten rid of it?'" Monken said. "It's one thing to say it; it's another thing to really believe it."
Although some Browns fans may not have confidence in Watson, the organization is backing him to perform well in the regular-season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars this week.
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