With the major roster-building phase of the offseason now behind us, the Cleveland Browns’ 2026 roster is coming into focus. On paper, GM Andrew Berry and his staff did a commendable job of restructuring the offense. There’s a real chance for the Browns to have seven new Week 1 starters between the offensive linemen and wide receivers.
Where Berry remains fully exposed to criticism is his approach to the quarterback room.
The Browns passed on adding a veteran to run head coach Todd Monken’s offense in both free agency and the trade market. Aside from spending a sixth-round draft pick on Arkansas’ Taylen Green, the team appears set to roll with Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders, and Dillon Gabriel at the top of the depth chart, at least to start training camp.
That decision has done little but funnel nightmare fuel to the franchise’s loyal fan base. Cleveland’s quarterback situation was among the worst in football in 2025. That a team in a clear state of transition this offseason would accept the status quo at the most important position in sports deserves all the heat and ridicule that’s sure to come this season.
It’s also led fans and national writers alike to the same nauseating question: Is playing Deshaun Watson in 2026 truly the right decision to make?
FanSided’s Wynston Wilcox provided the only answer that the majority of Browns fans will accept in 2026:
“It’s pretty clear the Cleveland Browns are focused on 2027 as they look for their franchise quarterback in next year's draft. That’s why Shedeur Sanders should be the starter for 2026. Starting Deshaun Watson is a pointless move at this point; he’s coming off a twice-torn Achilles and didn’t once look like an NFL quarterback since the blockbuster trade that landed him in Cleveland. Even if he does bounce back a bit with an improved supporting cast this season, what would that prove exactly?”
There’s only one path forward, but the Browns may not take it
In the NFL, the money trail typically leads to answers. The harsh reality is that the Browns have $46 million reasons to seriously consider Watson as their bridge quarterback in 2026.
That number makes up Watson’s base salary for the upcoming season. It’s an unavoidable bill the team must swallow after agreeing to make Watson’s $230 million contract fully guaranteed back in 2022. The team’s hands are essentially tied. Due to restructures to save salary cap space over the past three years, including this past March, the Browns are set to incur over $86 million in dead-cap charges after designating Watson as a post-June 1 release in March of 2027. That’s not a projection — it’s an exit plan the team’s been preparing for since December of 2024.
That’s a long way of saying the Browns can’t release Watson in 2026 without incurring crippling salary cap penalties. He’ll be on the roster for the full season, either as an active player on the 53-man roster, or back on injured reserve.
The most painful part of the Watson-Sanders debate is that the team is stuck with Watson. If the Browns could release Watson while remaining financially capable of fielding a competitive team, they would have done so already. Owner Jimmy Haslam made that painfully clear during a candid 2025 press conference.
Watson’s twice-ruptured Achilles tendon and poor play over his seven starts in 2024 should make Sanders a clear choice to start this season, based purely on the current state of the depth chart. Whether Sanders should be an NFL starter in 2026 is irrelevant. It makes no sense to run it back with Watson, only to pull the plug next March, as planned, and essentially start over on the fly at the most important position in the sport.
Regardless of all the PR going on in Berea these days, Watson’s time in Cleveland has a clear expiration date. Handing him the reins would send a brutal message to the team’s young roster. The Browns should be actively building for the future, not waving the white flag on an entire season just to save face on the worst contract decision in NFL history.
At this point, there’s only one logical path forward:
- Play Watson in the preseason to show he’s healthy, and then deactivate him on season-ending IR with the “Berea Flu.”
- Commit to going young in 2026, and let Sanders play and develop along with a young offensive core.
- Mercifully cut ties with Watson in 2027 and reassess the situation. Either you catch lightning in a bottle in Monken’s first year, or you make major moves either in free agency or the draft. Either way, you’ve developed an asset in Sanders who could either be traded or at worst kept on the roster at low cost as a young backup.
The low-hanging fruit aside, the Browns have smart people in their front office, led by Berry. This whole dilemma seems overly simplistic. For as strong as an offseason that Cleveland has had, team leadership continues to risk undoing everything by feeding life into a Watson storyline that should have been squashed a long time ago.
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