No sports transaction will ever turn me so completely against a franchise quite like the Deshaun Watson trade did.
In 2022, the Cleveland Browns looked at Watson’s 24 concurrent lawsuits from women who alleged he sexually assaulted them, knowing full well he would be suspended and that his character was, at minimum, highly in question and said, “eh, he’s a good quarterback,” promptly traded their entire draft future for him and signed him to one of the most patently absurd contracts in sports history: five years, $230 million, fully guaranteed.
Because of the immoral pragmatism that led to it, I don’t really feel bad for the Browns for anything that’s happened since: the wasting of Nick Chubb and Denzel Ward’s careers, the Myles Garrett trade. But the persistence of this franchise, the dogged determination to continuously make this as awful as possible for as many people as possible demands new investigation. Like an old-school John Oliver segment: how is Deshaun Watson still a thing?
I can't believe we're still talking about Deshaun Watson in 2026
Because of injury risks, a hard-capped salary dynamic and long-term market expectations, the NFL does not mess with fully guaranteed contracts like the NBA and MLB do. Watson was handed that contract to convince him to waive his no-trade clause, and Watson’s horrendous play since the trade has led to a three-year, highly publicized assault on the trade and contract as the worst thing any sports team has ever done in the history of ever. But the contract’s very existence has led to ripple effects that won’t stop rippling. There are new, never-before-seen ripples seemingly every day.
The latest is a braindead QB “competition” that just resulted in Watson, the very same Deshaun Watson, being named the Week 1 starter for the 2026 Browns. His two “competitors” were Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel, second-year “quarterbacks” who looked so uniquely incompetent in 2025 that the corpse of Houston Texans franchise QB who hasn’t been good since I was 18 years old is being exhumed and asked to run the offense.
Watson’s contract essentially means the Browns cannot cut him lest they invoke apocalyptic salary cap consequences. But that does not excuse their indefensible management of the QB position, still saying someone who the owner of the team called a “swing and miss” the best guy they have under center. The craziest part? He might actually be the best quarterback on the roster.
The Browns have mismanaged the QB position into oblivion
Don’t mistake that for a compliment; Deshaun Watson sucks at football. The limited games he’s played for the Browns have looked unprofessional, almost like someone was impersonating him and trying their best to look like Watson without any of the talent that made him good in Houston. Maybe his brain broke, maybe all the time off zapped his physical skills. In any case, he’s awful, but the Browns’ efforts to replace him have somehow been even worse.
After one of the draft slides of all time, Sanders was woefully unprepared to play NFL football in 2025. The Browns took Gabriel ahead of him in the THIRD ROUND, and he apparently had no chance of being the starter. That is a titanic misuse of resources; the trade set them back so far in their efforts to improve the roster that they didn’t have time to worry about the quarterback position, where they were beyond pot committed.
It’s still so funny that the Browns took a QB in the *third round* *LAST YEAR* who was a total non factor in the worst QB competition imaginable this year https://t.co/qPD6TqCXE3
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) August 24, 2026
The trade had a chance to be a paradigm shift in NFL history: a team writing a blank check for whatever it took to wrest a franchise quarterback from his team. You’ll remember, however, that the other famous “blank check” in world history involved Germany telling Austria-Hungary they would support them no matter what in World War I … which arguably led to 15-22 million people dying. This probably isn’t that bad, but I’m out on blank checks.
You know that old adage, “great player, even better person”? Well, Watson is the first guy famous enough to flip it around in a real way. Terrible player, even worse person. And yet here he is: the Week 1 starter for the Cleveland Browns in 2026.
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