The Cleveland Browns were embarrassed by the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1, losing 34-10, and Deshaun Watson played poorly in his first start at quarterback since the 2024 season. Unfortunately, neither of those things were surprising.
While Browns fans might have expected things to unfold the way they did, the entire ordeal was still pretty disheartening for one specific reason: Todd Monken continues to downplay how bad things are for Deshaun Watson.
Obviously, as a head coach, Monken can’t overreact or throw his players under the bus, but a lot of his comments about Watson are so out of touch with reality that he’s already sacrificing his own credibility as a head coach.
Todd Monken is quickly losing Browns fans with his defense of Deshaun Watson
Following Watson’s poor Week 1 performance, Monken has spoken with the media twice, and in both press conferences, he made comments about the veteran quarterback that Browns fans couldn’t help but scoff at.
During the postgame press conference on Sunday, Monken was asked if he thought Watson played too tentatively. The head coach explained that he didn’t think that was the case, saying, “He let that ball rip that was an interception. He let it rip. He just didn't see him or the defender made a great play on it.“ It was almost as if Monken was defending the interception because he liked Watson’s mindset to just let it rip.
Monken’s defense of Watson continued during his media availability on Monday, when he said that he “anticipates” Watson starting in Week 2 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"There were some really good things on film, some things that you can build on, and there were some others that, operationally, we got to get better at. ... And even the touchdown at the end, sure, that was garbage time, but that was on their one corner. That was one of their starters out there, and that was a communication between him and the receiver. So, there were a lot of things to build on. Was it perfect? Of course not."
After the outing Watson just had, no one is trying to hear about the few good plays he made, or what he was able to do in garbage time when the Jaguars were in cruise control.
The final noteworthy quote, and arguably the most damning, as Monken hitches his reputation to Watson, came when the head coach was asked if he felt the locker room was 100% behind Watson as the starter.
"I don’t know, you’d have to ask every one of those guys. You said 100%, and really, to be honest, they don’t have a choice. This isn’t a debate. I don’t ask the players every series what play we’re going to call, what play we’re going to call on defense. Like, their job is to play, and our job to put the best player on the field that we think gives us a chance to win. And I love our guys. But the moment we get into that, in terms of who this guy should be playing, what we’re doing, what we ought to be calling, we’ve lost. We’ve lost sight of the target, which is to own it and fix it and try like hell to get better."
All of these quotes make it clear that Monken is trying to protect Watson and not leave him out to dry. While that’s admirable for a head coach, he also has to stop handling the 10-year veteran quarterback with kid gloves. It’s ok to call things exactly how they are. That doesn’t mean that Monken doesn’t believe in Watson, it just means the quarterback has to play to a higher standard.
This downplaying of Watson’s struggles and constantly propping him up, as if people don’t know what they’re seeing, that Monken is currently doing could be very detrimental to his reputation as a head coach. In defense of Watson, Monken has gone against the locker room, fans, and media members, and that can only end well with the unlikely outcome of Watson playing well.
It’s almost like Monken is committed to going down with the ship, but Watson isn’t even a sinking ship. He’s an anchor dug into the seabed that Monken is risking his livelihood to swim down and retrieve. Monken needs to abandon the mission or he will find himself in the same place as Watson.
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