We have to give the Cleveland Browns some credit for this: For a 3-12 team, there’s still plenty to watch for over these final two weeks of the 2025 season.
From Shedeur Sanders’ final auditions, to Myles Garrett’s sack record chase, to the 2026 draft order, there’s still a lot to sink our teeth into through Christmas week and beyond. That’s not even to mention looming decisions on head coach Kevin Stefanski and quarterback Deshuan Watson.
On the latter situation, the team first has to decide whether to give Watson a spot on the 53-man roster to finish the season. Stefanski told reporters on Monday morning that he’ll announce that decision this week, prior to the expiration of Watson’s 21-day practice window.
According to Zac Jackson of The Athletic, it’s all a moot point for 2025. The most impactful Watson decisions loom in February, when general manager Andrew Berry and the front office will have to start coming to grips with the vetern quarterback's NFL-leading $80.7 million salary cap hit.
Reporter predicts what the Browns will do with Deshaun Watson (and fans will like it)
When looking at the Watson situation logically, it does make sense for the Browns to activate him to the 53-man roster ahead of Sunday’s home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Cleveland’s been ravaged by injuries, so the roster's a mess anyway; the move would allow Watson to continue logging practice reps with the team over the final two weeks.
Backup QB reps behind the scenes is all Browns fans should expect to hear about in 2025, per Jackson, no matter what the Browns decide to do with his roster spot this week.
My guess is the Browns will shut Watson down for the season. Even if he’s activated, it would likely to be just to keep him practicing. There was never much realistic chance he’d play this year.
— Zac Jackson (@AkronJackson) December 22, 2025
As for what happens next with his contract, we will see - likely in late February
To Jackson’s point, the Browns can continue Watson’s progression while mitigating the PR damage with fans by simply naming him the third-string QB for both the Steelers and Bengals games to finish the season. Since both Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are healthy, and Watson isn’t a practice squad elevation, he’s eligible for the emergency QB designation, meaning he wouldn’t even count among the team’s 48 active players on game days.
It’s all a long way of saying that this is Sanders’ show to finish 2025, and we’ll be on to 2026 in short order. That’s when the real discussion on Watson comes into play: Will the Browns do right by their fans, cut bait with a post-June 1 designation, and take the bulk of their dead-cap medicine over the 2026 and 2027 seasons? Or will they keep him on the roster for 2026, restructure the deal to create cap space, and deal with the consequences in future seasons, after Watson’s contract voids in 2027 and he officially hits free agency?
Reports have been all over the place on this topic, but Jackson wrote in November that releasing Watson post-June 1 is firmly on the table for the Browns this coming offseason.
“With the only real alternative being to continue to restructure the deal, keep Watson on the team and push big cap hits even further to the future to basically halve the 2026 number, it seems inevitable that the Browns will officially cut ties with a post-June 1 designation early next year, which would put his dead-money number for 2026 in the range of $70 million to $80 million after whatever insurance credit the team receives.”
No matter how you slice it, the Browns will be paying the price for Watson, whether he’s on the roster or not next year. But if the team believes in Sanders, or opts to draft a quarterback in the 2026 draft with a top-three draft pick, ripping off the Band-Aid early and swallowing the bitter salary cap medicine feels like the most logical outcome for Browns fans to get behind.
Either way, fans shouldn't mistake Watson's 2025 roster spot as anything more than procedural.