Deshaun Watson finished 5-of-12 for 36 yards and a 14.6 passer rating against Buffalo on Saturday, and Todd Monken still won’t say who’s starting the opener.
Monken was pressed on the timeline after the loss, and what came out wasn’t really an answer. “Well, at some point, I’m gonna have to decide, right?” he said, before adding he’d wait to watch the tape. No date. No name.
Watching tape sounds like diligence, right up until you notice what it’s actually measuring: whether one bad half against Buffalo now weighs as much as four years of NFL snaps already did.
Shedeur Sanders got the setup Monken had promised him: reps with the No. 1 offense for the Cleveland Browns in the first half, the same lineup that presumably starts Week 1 if he’s the guy. Watson took his snaps after halftime, running the offense that took the field once the starters came off it. Sanders went 9-of-11 for 74 yards and an 8-yard touchdown to Luke Floriea that tied the game at 7, finishing at an 87.1 rating despite an interception of his own.
The Browns’ own account posted the throw before Buffalo answered it:
https://twitter.com/Browns/status/2091232202793062702
It’s the best evidence yet that the split-snap plan is showing something real. It isn’t proof, not when Watson threw a pick of his own and Cleveland’s only touchdown of the night belonged to the other guy.
It flipped the other way one week earlier. Sanders opened the preseason 6-of-11 for 79 yards against the Bears, no touchdowns, an interception, stalling out every time the field shortened. Watson led an early touchdown drive and accounted for all 10 of Cleveland’s points in a 34-10 loss. Two different quarterbacks have looked like the answer in two different games, which is exactly why one half of tape against Buffalo shouldn’t be settling anything four years in the making.
None of this is happening to a rookie on a minimum deal. Watson is playing out the final year of the $230 million, fully guaranteed contract Cleveland handed him in 2022, and Saturday was his first home game on the field where he tore his Achilles in October 2024, an injury he re-ruptured in rehab five months later that wiped out his entire 2025 season.
The crowd let him hear it anyway. Watson called the reaction “disrespectful” and said it wasn’t about the performance.
“It’s a little bit more personal than that,” he said. “The last time I played on this field, I tore my Achilles. That same fan base, they cheered when I got hurt.”
Swipe Sports has been writing some version of this story all summer, because the Browns keep supplying a new chapter instead of an ending: The Browns Have a Shedeur Sanders Problem They Won’t Name in July, Pat McAfee said what the Browns front office won’t two weeks ago. Monken telling reporters he needs another look at the film is just this week’s version of the same non-answer.
My dad used to grumble through every quarterback competition the Cardinals dragged into September, and none of them were real competitions by the time they ended. They were just a coach buying enough time to say what he already knew.
Every day Monken doesn’t decide, he’s already decided.
