TankWatch: Cleveland Browns

A deep dive into the smoldering Deshaun Watson impact crater.

Deshaun Watson belongs in one of those prisons from a 1950s movie.

You know the kind of prison I am talking about. The kind that dramatized the dehumanization of the carceral system. The kind that an enlightened society should have nothing to do with. Watson belongs in one of those, breaking rocks beneath a blazing sun on a highway crew under the supervision of a sheriff with sunglasses surgically attached to his face and three hungry German shepherds while chained at the ankle to Robert Mitchum, who has an ominous Southern drawl and a sharpened spoon in the heel of his boot. 

Watson’s off-field misconduct has been well documented and thoroughly editorialized over the last five years; you are probably not here to hear a sermon or read an affidavit. His budget-bloating contract and kismet-satisfying horrendousness this year are also well-covered talking points. So this edition of TankWatch will try to go relatively light on the Descuzzball discussion. But Watson remains the primary reason why the Browns are 1-4 and staring down the barrel of a salary cap apocalypse. The secondary reasons are mostly Descuzzball-adjacent. Still, let’s try to approach this familiar topic from a less familiar angle.

The Browns Story So Far

The Factory of Sadness has enjoyed a relative Renaissance recently, with two playoff appearances in the last five seasons. The Browns reached the playoffs in 2023 thanks to Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski and Comeback Player of the Year Joe Flacco. Their defense ranked second in DVOA last year and allowed the fewest yards in the NFL. The 2023 Browns were fun to root for and appeared to be capable of greater things given a full season of league-average quarterback play.

Then their $250-million starting quarterback returned from a shoulder injury and turned everything back into rat pellets.

The Browns’ only win this season came against the desultory Jaguars. They average just 15.8 points per game and 9.8 points per game in the first three quarters. Their offensive line, one of the team’s strengths for many years, has been ripped apart by injuries. Their defense is buckling under the strain of trying to pitch shutouts AND generate points off turnovers every week for the last two years. 

And Watson? He’s on pace to get sacked a record 88 times, a feat that can only be partially blamed on line woes. He is averaging 3.28 adjusted net yards per attempt, second-worst to only Will Levis in 2024. Some recent quarterbacks with similar ANY/A in a season include Bailey Zappe last year (3.36), Daniel Jones last year (2.69), Skylar Thompson in 2022 (3.49), Jake Luton for the 2020 Jaguars (2.92) and Bryce Petty for the Jets in 2017 (3.12) and 2016 (3.25). Watson is playing like a quarterback whose very existence most fans will forget 10 years later. Unfortunately, no one will ever forget him.

Leadership Structure

Jimmy Haslam is a Coen brothers villain, a schlubby hustler whose idea of a big score is a slip-and-fall in the Whole Foods produce aisle. We’re talking about a truck stop magnate who got caught skimming the profits off of gasoline rebate coupons from customers, for heaven’s sake: Haslam is one step up from the folks who siphoned gas out of parked cars by slurping it through a rubber hose during the 1970s oil crisis. 

In other pump-’n’-dump related shenanigans, Haslam was accused late in 2023 of bribing his Pilot truckstop employees in an effort to keep the company’s stock price high until he could sell his remaining stake to Warren Buffett. Haslam trying to outsmart Buffett is a perfect metaphor for the Browns trying to compete with teams like the Chiefs.

Haslam’s wife Dee officially co-owns the Browns and has hopefully seen Fargo.

Paul DePodesta was born too early to be a cryptobro, so he instead fooled early Millennials into thinking he invented sports statistics. DePodesta is the most unrepentant faux-analytical self-promoter this side of Malcolm Gladwell. He rode Billy Beane’s coattails to baseball success and parlayed sub-Strat-o-Matic-level statistical insights into a pop psychological movement and a feature film that makes Draft Day look like Casablanca. 

DePodesta’s interpretation of Moneyball is the Arby’s brisket of sports analytics, but he’s Haslam’s combination “chief strategy officer” and Rasputin, with a dotted-line relationship to the football operations org chart that keeps him insulated from accountability. DePodesta masterminded the 2016-17 tanking circus that resulted in a 1-31 two-year record; everyone was fired for it except him. 

DePodesta remains a hero to many in the analytics community. As James Randi used to point out, scientists are easily deceived by con artists.

General manager Andrew Berry serves as the Browns’ latest face man and fall guy. Berry’s record looks outstanding so long as you assume that he actively fought against the team’s worst personnel decision and the knock-on decisions which resulted from it, an assumption which is bound to make anyone’s record look much better.

Kevin Stefanski is currently the NFL’s second most impressive coaching Kevin. He has led the Browns to more victories than any coach since Marty Schottenheimer. Stefanski earned Coach of the Year honors in 2020 and 2023, which is a sure sign that: a) he is pretty good; and b) he is being graded on a steep “look how well the dear is doing under the circumstances” curve. 

Stefanski’s right-hand man is defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, a master of many defensive schemes, all of them “base.”

Quarterback Situation

My highly unpopular – and therefore probably accurate – Watson take is that he was never actually a great quarterback.

Oh, Watson was very good when he played for the late-2010s Texans. He ranked 10th in the NFL in DYAR (including rushing) in 2018 and 13th in 2019. So he was a top 10 quarterback. Barely. Almost.

Watson’s best statistical season was 2020, when he led the NFL with 4,823 passing yards and 8.9 yards per attempt. Watson finished fifth in DYAR that year. The Texans finished 4-12 amid the implosion of the Bill O’Brien regime. It’s hard to shake the impression that Watson padded his stats at the ends of losing efforts in games no one watched in 2020. In fact, Watson threw 13 fourth-quarter touchdowns that year but was credited with zero fourth-quarter comebacks.

The All-22 filmbro influencers adored Watson in 2020, but when is it ever like them to get swept up in a narrative of their own creation? (Don’t answer that.) Remember: O’Brien was the “bad guy” before we knew what Watson (allegedly) did with his downtime. Watson looked like a victim of circumstance on a dysfunctional team. It’s easy to overrate a quarterback whose stats look great while his coach throws practice-field conniptions and the team’s failson owner is having bible stories read to him from a pop-up book.

NFL owners are the sorts of people who would bid enough money to fund a hospital at an auction for the right to eat the last breeding pair of an endangered species, then slather the roasted dodos in ketchup. Naturally, they were tantalized by Watson once he became forbidden and unattainable. And Haslam, sweaty and desperate to appear cool in front of the owners who don’t wear off-the-rack suits that permanently smell like exhaust fumes, was inevitably the owner who swooped in and overpaid for the contents of the dead cocaine kingpin’s storage shed.

Backup Jameis Winston was credibly accused of some heinous acts in college but looks like Saint Francis of Assisi in comparison to Watson. Winston’s rise-’n’-grind personality makes him popular with teammates, which is rumored to be causing some friction in the quarterback room. There were also whispers that Flacco was not retained for clubhouse political reasons, though the Browns may also have just wanted to save four million much-needed dollars.

What’s Going Right

• Myles Garrett is playing through injuries to both feet but remains a high-impact pass rusher.

• Cornerback Denzel Ward typically shuts down his side of the field. Slot corner Greg Newsome is playing well. 

• Jerry Jeudy has been a pleasant surprise as a low-cost trade acquisition after a semi-disappointing early career with the Broncos. 

• Nick Chubb, on the mend from a Week 2 ACL/MCL tear in 2023, has returned to practice and should be back in a week or two, providing a boost to a sagging running game.

• The kicking units have been solid.

What’s Going Wrong

• The Browns have converted just 18.2% of third downs.

• The Browns have been outscored 94-22 in second and third quarters. They have outscored opponents 30-6 in fourth quarters, but that has mostly been garbage-time production. 

• Pro Bowl guard Wyatt Teller is on IR, forcing third-round pick Zak Zinter into the lineup. Right tackle Jack Conklin has not played this season due to a hamstring injury; he is expected back soon. Center Ethan Pocic suffered an ankle injury against the Raiders, returned against the Commanders, then suffered a minor knee injury. Left tackle Jedrick Wills has been in and out of the lineup while recovering from an MCL injury. Some veteran backup linemen have also been injured. 

• Tight end David Njoku suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 1 and returned in Week 5.

• Cornerback Martin Emerson has been a liability in coverage. Schwartz flip-flopped Ward and Emerson against the Commanders, but Jayden Daniels still easily located Emerson and tossed deep passes to Terry McLaurin and Dyami Brown.

• Per Pro Football Reference, the Browns have blitzed 61 times (the third-highest rate in the NFL) but recorded just 38 pressures (a below-league-average rate). That’s a sign that no one but the gimpy Garrett (who isn’t always on the field) is getting home as a pass rusher.

Building Blocks

Wills, Jeudy and linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah are the Browns’ best players in the 25-and-under demographic. Most of their top contributors are 27 to 33: not old, but well into their peaks and likely to decline in a year or two.

Watson cost the Browns three years of top draft picks. The best players the Browns have drafted from 2022 through 2024 include Emerson, mammoth tackle Dawand Jones (who has filled in for Conklin), running back Jerome Ford (filling in for Chubb) and depth receivers Cedric Tillman and David Bell. 

Future Assets

And now the moment you have all been waiting for:

The Browns are currently $4.6 million over the theoretical salary cap for 2025 and $14.7 million over the theoretical 2026 cap. Watson’s cap number for each season is a staggering $72.9 million.

Amari Cooper and Wills become free agents after this season. The Browns have little chance of retaining their top receiver or starting left tackle unless, sigh, they extend Watson again.

The good news is that the Browns have a first-round pick again in 2025. They traded their 2025 fifth-rounder to acquire Za’Darius Smith but have four sixth-rounders next year with which to trawl for cheap reinforcements.

Rebuilding Plan

Watson is untradeable. We won’t discuss the possibility of the Browns trying to void his contract due to additional allegations of misbehavior, because we don’t want to wish additional Watson misbehavior on the populace. (A recent allegation of a pre-2021 assault was quietly settled.) Instead, we will try our best to keep this rebuilding plan feasible.

Bench Watson. It’s time to bring this situation to a head. Maybe he storms off and threatens retirement (something he would not do, because that would void the back end of his contract). Maybe Haslam goes apoplectic and threatens to fire people. (Kevin Stefanski would be hired as the new Jaguars coach the Tuesday after the regular-season finale.)  

A Watson benching would be explosive and have consequences. But the Browns risk a locker-room collapse that could take players like Garrett and Ward with it. Anything is better than watching the team fall apart and doing nothing about the obvious cause.

Stop Extending Watson. Descuzzball’s contract is famously fully guaranteed, which means none of his money disappears when the Browns play credit card roulette with his future cap figures. The Browns are already in a proration purgatory that will extend at least one year past the length of Watson’s contract. They should therefore take their medicine and eat $73 million in cap space in 2025, whether Watson is their starter or not. Yep, we have reached “you must pay your back-taxes to the IRS before you buy groceries” mode.  

Trade Deadline Fire Sale! Cooper has run hot-and-cold this year but still has trade value. Za’Darius Smith is looking a little creaky, but there’s always a deadline market for old edge rushers. A healthy Conklin would find suitors. Newsome is a fine cornerback whose rookie contract expires after 2025; better to flip for for an affordable youngster than try to find room for another big contract by — you guessed it — extending Watson again.

Quality veterans like Njoku and Owusu-Koramoah have booby-trapped deals full of voidable years, which would make them difficult to trade. The Watson contract has forced the Browns to extend debt far into the future, limiting the team’s flexibility. Moneyball, everyone!

If someone offers a bouquet of high draft picks for Garrett or Ward, the Browns should pick up the phone. 

Do Moneyball for Real This time. The Browns’ first DePodesta-driven stab at Moneyball, the aforementioned Sashi Brown/Hue Jackson catastrophe, was vintage know-it-all Silicon Valley startup resource incineration disguised as shrewd analytics. (Gotta waste draft picks to earn draft picks!) Moneyball Phase Two with Berry and Stefanski has become completely anti-analytical due to the Watson trade and the many financial and draft-tactical compromises it caused. The Browns are now exactly the sort of bloated, aging underachievers that analytics principles are formulated to help.

So let’s find some market inefficiencies! Are up-the-middle offensive and defensive players undervalued? Build a power-running team to get the Browns back on their feet! Are young journeyman quarterbacks given up on too quickly? If so, finding a Sam Darnold or Geno Smith might be a safer choice than hopping on the rookie carousel! The Vikings have built a defensive scheme that gets the most from square-peg role players. Maybe the Browns need someone more creative than Schwartz and his “let the All Pro edges and cornerbacks feast” philosophy! Let’s see the Browns dust off some turn-of-the-century Oakland Athletics magic and rebuild the roster out of cheap talent while also performing credit repair. 

C’mon, smartest guys in the room. Do something really smart for once.

Bottom Line

The Browns have been chasing a sunk cost from the moment they traded for Watson. The 2024 season was their last opportunity to see any return on their investment. But Watson has gone from mediocre to disappointing to unsalvageable over the course of three years, wasting the primes of Garrett, Chubb, Ward and the core offensive linemen. The Browns can be forgiven for trying to compete in 2024, but they must pivot ASAP to harm-reduction mode. They cannot really even think about rebuilding until the radioactivity of the Watson meltdown reaches its half life.

Dan Orlovsky said the Browns are in “the worst situation in pro sports” on one of those talkshows (I refuse to determine which one). Shannon Sharpe called Watson the Ben Simmons of the NFL (which is unfair to Simmons) and claimed to be “running out of words” to describe the Browns predicament.

For once, I agree with Orlovsky and can relate to Sharpe. When it comes to the Browns and Watson, I am now out of jokes, insights and observations. I wanted Watson to disappear down a mineshaft as punishment for his misdeeds in 2021. Now I just want him to go away for being bad, sad and boring, and for taking a once-lovably grungy franchise and its long-suffering fanbase down with him. Oh, and also for his misdeeds. 

You can go away fabulously wealthy and legal-consequence free, Descuzzball. Just go away.