Deshaun Watson and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad QB Room

Neither Deshaun Watson nor Shedeur Sanders are good at playing quarterback, and so the Cleveland Browns are screwed.

Aaron Schatz’s DVOA metric currently goes back to 1977. In the 49-year history of DVOA, there have been 1,653 quarterback seasons with enough passing plays to qualify for the leaderboards – 200 in a non-strike-shortened season. Of those 1,653 seasons, Deshaun Watson’s 2024 is the 11th-worst ever recorded, clocking in at a DVOA of -51.1%. Shedeur Sanders’ 2025 is the fifth-worst ever recorded, at -59.6%. And, just in case you thought Dillon Gabriel was the secret third option that would get them out of their jam, his 2025 was the 60^th-worst ever recorded, at -33.8%. There are no good options here.

The decision to name Watson as their starting quarterback for 2026 has seemed sadly inevitable from the moment they allowed him to get back on the field. Despite Jimmy Haslem admitting that Watson was a “big swing and a miss,” the Browns seemed to never seriously give any consideration to any of the other three quarterbacks on the roster. It would help if Sanders or Gabriel had not been terrible as a rookie, or if Taysom Green was more than an athlete still learning to play the position, but it felt like the Browns never even seriously considered going with anyone else. Even when Watson struggled significantly more than Sanders in preseason action, he ended up winning what could laughably called a “competition”.

Watson’s post-game press conference where he attacked the fans for booing him also feels like it should have been disqualifying. While he tried to walk it back later, Watson admonishing Cleveland’s fans for booing him was a terrible look. “I think the whole world knows, it has nothing to do about the performance,” he said. “It’s a little bit personal. It’s a disrespectful thing.” Well, it absolutely does have to do with the performance, as Watson’s play under his mega, fully-guaranteed contract has made this the worst deal in NFL history. Even in his injury-shortened seasons in Cleveland, Watson has only managed negative passing DVOA. His passing performance against Buffalo, the game when he was essentially handed the job, saw him go 5-for-12 for 36 yards and an interception in a terrible performance. He was thoroughly outplayed by Sanders last week, and still ended up winning the job. It’s kind of sad truth about modern fandom that playing ball well smooths over a lot. Had Watson played like he did in Houston – heck, had Watson shown signs that he cared about playing poorly – he wouldn’t be receiving this reception.

And even if the fan’s hate was entirely personal, Watson brought that upon himself! It’s hard to really take the moral high ground on people not liking you when you have a laundry list of sexual misconduct and assault allegations in the past, without even the slightest trace of even feigned personal growth or remorse. It takes real effort and focused intent to be as unlikeable and skeezy as Watson is – as bad of a human being as he has been as a quarterback. He will be off the team in, at most, 198 days, when the Browns can finally cut his contract in a way they can financially survive. I would suggest Cleveland fans start an advent calendar to celebrate.

But you’ve read all this before, from people who have phrased it better than me. What about Watson, the football player? The Browns screwed that up too, right?

There’s a tiny bit of logic in starting Watson over Sanders, in that it’s easier to go from the veteran to the developing player when you make a mid-season quarterback change; going the other way typically means the young guy’s goose is cooked. But that’s already assuming that the Browns will need to change their starter. When the best defense someone can make for your plan is “hey, it will hurt less when he inevitably sucks,” you have a bad plan.

And this is a hole entirely of the Browns’ own making. They know they are not contending this year, and have no plans of contending this year. They don’t even particularly care about looking like they’re contending this year to try to sell tickets for their new stadium or anything – if so, they wouldn’t have shipped Myles Garrett out of town. They absolutely could go with “this is a rebuilding year, and we’re going to fully evaluate our young passers and build upon the potential they show” and just run with Sanders and Gabriel and Green. There is essentially zero chance that Watson will be on the roster next season, even if he suddenly bounces back and has a miraculous MVP season – financially, they’d be fairly ruined if he stuck around without a long extension even Haslem would think twice about offering.

The Browns care what they will look like next year and the year after, and giving Watson any playing time whatsoever doesn’t do anything to help with that plan. Starting the young guys does. Or, if they really are already giving up on last year’s draft picks, they could have tried to sign Kyler Murray or Tua Tagovailoa for near the league minimum, or tried to grab a Kirk Cousins to mentor Sanders rather than Fernando Mendoza. None of these are great options, but they would have been cheap and almost assuredly will be better players in 2026 than Watson will be, even without considering in the disdain the fanbase has for them. The Browns have been acting like the quarterback situation is out of their hands, and they were locked into starting Watson with no other alternatives. No! They chose to be in this situation; proactively put themselves there. The idiocy is coming from inside the house.

Loop back around to that opening sentence. Neither Watson nor Sanders are good at playing quarterback. But if the Browns don’t care about winning in 2026, it doesn’t matter how good either player is right now, just like it doesn’t matter that Watson used to be a top 10 passer years ago in Houston. It matters how good they’ll be in the future. Yes, the last time we saw either quarterback they were among the worst to play the game over the last 50 years, but that’s the past. It’s very unlikely either will look as bad as they did in their last starting roles, sheerly because keeping up that level of poor play is hard, to say the least. What we need to know is how often someone who puts up a terrible level of performance bounces back into something respectable, and if that’s more likely to happen from a second-year player or a veteran with a past track record of success.

(As always, FTN’s historical DVOA archive remains the gold standard for historic advanced stats, and I can’t recommend them highly enough)