Deshaun Watson Will Start Week 2 for Browns, Todd Monken Confirms After Loss to Jaguars
Todd Monken is sticking with Deshaun Watson, and the reaction in Cleveland is going to be louder than the decision deserves.
The Browns head coach told reporters Monday that Watson will remain the starting quarterback for Week 2 against the Buccaneers.
“I anticipate Deshaun’ll be our starter,” Monken said. “There were some really good things on film, some things that you can build on. And there were some others that operationally we can get better at.”
Now look at the actual line from Week 1: 16 of 22 for 205 yards, a touchdown and an interception in a loss to the Jaguars.
That stat line does not justify a change
Seventy-three percent completion rate. Better than nine yards per attempt. A touchdown. One interception. In a vacuum, that is a fine day at quarterback, and it is not close to the worst performance any starter turned in during the opening weekend.
The trouble is the interception came on Cleveland’s first drive, which drew boos from the home crowd, and the game turned into a Jaguars rout. Once a game goes sideways early in Cleveland, the quarterback’s numbers stop mattering to the building. They are still numbers, though, and the numbers do not say bench him.
Monken is right here, and he is right for an unglamorous reason. You do not make a quarterback change in Week 2 off 205 yards and a touchdown. If you do, you are reacting to the scoreboard and the crowd noise rather than the tape, and every subsequent decision you make gets measured against that precedent.
The phrase to watch in Monken’s answer is “operationally we can get better at.” That is a coach describing process problems, not talent problems. Process problems get fixed in a week. Talent problems do not.
The rest of the injury fallout is worse news
Cleveland’s bigger Week 1 loss might be at running back. Dylan Sampson, 22, will miss significant time with a knee injury. He was on crutches after the game after returning two kickoffs for 64 yards.
A rookie-aged back losing significant time is a quieter story than a quarterback controversy and probably a more consequential one for how the Browns operate over the next month.
On the other side, Jacksonville came out of the win in better shape. Brian Thomas Jr. will be limited in practice this week with a shoulder injury, but Liam Coen sounded unbothered. “I fully imagine him being able to play this game [at Denver], no issues, just might not be able to get hit throughout the week or something,” the Jaguars coach said.
Thomas caught all three of his targets for 40 yards. Parker Washington led Jacksonville with 83 receiving yards, which tells you how evenly the Jaguars spread things out in a game they controlled.
Back to Cleveland. The case for Watson in Week 2 is not that he was great. It is that a 16-of-22, 205-yard, one-touchdown performance in a blowout loss is evidence of a team problem more than a quarterback problem, and swapping quarterbacks would not address the team problem.
If Watson opens another game with a giveaway and the Buccaneers pull away, this conversation restarts on a much less friendly footing. For now, Monken made the call the tape supports.
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.