The Cleveland Browns are going to bench Deshaun Watson. They are just running one more week of theater first.
Watson will need an outstanding performance on the road against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to keep his starting job, according to Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com. In a separate report, Cabot indicated Shedeur Sanders is positioned to take over. Ian Rapoport of ESPN has reported the Browns are re-evaluating the position ahead of Week 3.
Week 1 Told Everyone What They Needed to Know
Naming Watson the Week 1 starter was a controversial call before a snap was played. He then went 16-of-22 for 205 yards with a touchdown and an interception in a 34-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Look at those numbers. A 72 percent completion rate and 205 yards in a 24-point loss is the statistical signature of a quarterback moving the ball sideways. Efficient, unthreatening, and attached to a blowout.
The Timing Gives the Game Away
Here is the detail worth sitting with. The Browns appear ready to sit Watson before their home opener.
Watson is deeply unpopular with the Cleveland fanbase, and he has made that worse with public comments about fans he considers disrespectful. Benching him on the road and handing the home crowd a different quarterback is not a coincidence. It is a front office trying to avoid a stadium full of people booing its own starter.
That is a reasonable thing for a business to want. It is also an admission that the organization knows exactly where it stands with its customers.
Why Give Him Two Starts At All
This is the real question. If Watson’s leash was one bad game long, the Browns burned a Week 1 loss and a week of practice reps finding out something they could have predicted.
The charitable read is that they hoped he might rediscover something. Quarterbacks do occasionally come back from the dead, and the Browns are still paying him an amount of money that makes any recovery worth chasing. The less charitable read is that they wanted cover before making the switch.
Either way, Shedeur Sanders loses developmental reps to a process everyone could see the end of.
Sanders Inherits a Mess
Whenever the handoff happens, Sanders walks into a 0-2 team with a fanbase already exhausted, a locker room that has been through the Watson situation for years, and an offense that scored 10 points in the opener.
That is not a fair place to start a career. It is also the only place available, and Cleveland does not have the luxury of waiting for better conditions.
The Browns should just make the change. Whatever Watson does in Tampa, the plan is written.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.