Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson is unlikely to help the team on the field this season. But a new report suggests he’s doing everything he can to help the team’s quarterbacks of the future. Browns’ beat writer Mary Kay Cabot shared Watson’s role this summer, rehabbing from a double Achilles tear that’s poised to have him miss most, if not all, of 2025. While recovering, Watson is focusing his energy on rookie quarterbacks Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.
“Watson has been an awesome teammate inside the quarterback room and meeting rooms, and has been a great cheerleader for the four quarterbacks vying for the starting job,” Cabot wrote via the New York Post.
Cabot highlighted Gabriel and Sanders in particular, writing that Watson has been “especially helpful to the rookies.” The Browns selected Gabriel in the third round before trading up into the fifth to snag Sanders and stop his draft weekend free-fall.
Cleveland has the NFL’s most wide-open quarterback competition with no clear favorite. Veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett are jockeying with Gabriel and Sanders for the job. Flacco or Pickett appear to be the favorite with fellow beat writer Scott Petrak telling us on Friday’s The Terrible Podcast that Flacco has the best chance to start. Sanders, meanwhile, has only slim odds of opening the season as the No. 1.
The Browns’ mess has been created because of Deshaun Watson. Cleveland took on the risk and massive PR hit of trading for Watson in 2022 despite two dozen sexual harassment and/or assault allegations against him, leading to a lengthy suspension.
The trade looked even worse once Watson took the field, as he looked like a shell of the top-five quarterback he was in Houston. In 19 starts with the Browns, Watson’s thrown for only 19 touchdowns to 12 interceptions while posting a 9-10 record. He tore his Achilles in Week Seven last season and re-tore it while rehabbing, undergoing a second surgery in January.
Still owed massive amounts of money from his fully guaranteed $230 million contract, he figures to remain on the Browns’ roster for another season. Cutting him next offseason with a post-June 1 designation is a plausible scenario, though it would incur an incredible $80.7 million worth of dead money according to Over the Cap.
Pittsburgh and Cleveland will first square off in Week Six. The rematch won’t take place until Week 17.
