Do the Browns have their answer at quarterback already on the team?
Fred Greetham
BEREA -- It would appear that the Cleveland Browns are in quite a bind at the quarterback position going forward.
Or are they?
The Browns have two more years committed to Deshaun Watson and his overwhelming guaranteed contract with virtually no way to get out from it in 2025.
On Oct. 14, salary cap expert Jack Duffin wrote this forThe OBR:
"If the Cleveland Browns dump Watsonduring the 2025 season then they are going to need to pay $92m of cash which will effectively end any hopes of competing during the 2025 season and then need the 2026 season to start rebuilding the roster. I would guess this will lead to several star players trying to force their way out as they don't want to lose two years of their careers.
"The more rational approach is to keep him during 2025 means he takes up $46m in 2025 and $46m in 2026. This means they can have a quality roster during both years, if Haslam continues paying $50m more than league average then the Watson contract is effectively free and Andrew Berry is competing on an even playing field with the rest of the league for two years."
With that said, with every game that goes by, for the most part, it becomes more and more obvious that there are better options than Watson out there for the Browns. Joe Flacco displayed that in a magnificent stretch of five regular season games to finish the 2023 regular season, throwing for over 300 yards in those five games. Jameis Winston has shown more in five starts in 2024 than Watson did in his three partial seasons with the Browns.
The case could be made that the offense was better under Jacoby Brissettas well,in Watson's first season with the Browns.
It is pretty evident that the offense is much more explosive with quarterbacks other than Watson. In ten starts, Winston and Flacco have combined for over 300 yards in seven of those games the last two seasons.
The offense has been revitalized since Winston took over as the starter Oct. 27 following Watson's season-ending injury. Watson didn't have a 200-yard passing game in seven starts, and the Browns failed to score 20 points in a game as they started 1-6. Two of the top eight passing totals in franchise history have come in Winston's five starts.
Winston is 2-3 as the starter with 1,680 passing yards, 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions in the five starts. The yards rank third for a player in his first five starts with a team, trailing Drew Bledsoe's 1,762 with the Bills and Kirk Cousins' 1,688 with the Vikings
The Greetham Angle wrote this story before the Broncos game and decided to hold off posting until after the game. With that said, in his fifth start, Winston set the Browns all-time franchise record for a single game with 497 passing yards, passing Josh McCown, who set the previous record with 452 yards in 2015. Former Browns great, Brian Sipe, is third all-time with 444 yards set back in 1981.
That's quite a feat when looking at some of the names that were Browns quarterbacks back in the hey day, including Hall of Famer Otto Graham, Bernie Kosar, Sipe, to name a few.
The Browns have scored 20 points or more only three times this season, all with Winston as quarterback. Winston has thrown for over 300 yards three times this season, including 497 in his last game.
Could the Browns look at Winston as the starting quarterback moving forward--even with Watson on the roster?
The age difference is not much different with Winston currently 30, while Watson is 29. The Browns plan at the time of the trade for Watson was thinking that Watson could be the quarterback for ten years.
The Browns like second-year quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, but might not get the chance to evaluate him the rest of the season, unless Winston is injured or the team makes a purposeful decision to do so.
Before Winston led the Browns to a win over the Steelers, Stefanski was asked about committing to Winston going forward.
"Yeah, obviously I'm not there at all," Stefanski said. "I'm focused on what happened (against the Steelers) so we can talk to the players about that and make corrections and those type of things and then I'll focus on Denver, but not really thinking about anything past that."
The Browns also have their two highest yardage totals and four of the top five with Winston at quarterback. Winston has completed 61.3 percent of his passes for 1,763 yards with 11 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 16 sacks and a passer rating of 88.4. He also has 19 rushes for 57 yards and a touchdown on the season.
With five starts and one series against the Bengals, Winston's numbers over a full season, if continued at the current average, would translate to close to 5,000 yards passing with 33 touchdowns and 21 interceptions. For comparison, the Browns single-season record for passing is held by Sipe, who threw for 4,132 yards and 30 touchdowns and 14 interceptions in 1980, in a 16-game season.
In the seven games that Watson started, he threw for 1,148 yards (63.4 pct.) with five touchdowns and three interceptions and a rating of 79.0. His QBR was 22.5, 33rd in the NFL in the QBR ranking of quarterbacks that qualify for the rating. Watson rushed for 148 yards and a touchdown in seven games.
Winston passed Watson's passing yardage total (1,266 to 1,148 yards) in his fourth game as a starter and now has 1,763. Overall, Winston's 66.7 QBR rating is seventh-overall in the NFL.
Winston's 80.0 QBR rating against the Steelers was the fourth-highest ranking of quarterbacks for that week. Winston's 76.4 QBR against the Broncos was the sixth-best last week.
Overall, Winston is not setting the NFL on fire, but is playing so much better than Watson was. He just qualified for the NFL's passer rating and is now 19th in the league with a rating of 88.4. Watson is 30th at 79.0.
In the 24-19 win over the Steelers last week, Winston was 18-of-27 for 219 yards with no touchdowns and one interception, although he had a touchdown dropped byDavid Njokuon a wide open pass in the end zone. Winston's rating for the game was 76.0. He rushed three times for seven yards, but had a crucial two-yard scramble for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal and led the offense down the field for the game-winning score.
The Browns passing offense has moved from the bottom of the NFL after Watson was injured to the 13th-best passing team after Winston took over through the Broncos game, up to 226.8 per game.
A big concern is Winston's propensity to throw a lot of interceptions. In his 10-year career, Winston has thrown 152 touchdowns with 106 interceptions. He threw two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns that figured heavily in the 41-32 loss.
In comparison, Sipe, who is considered to be one of the best quarterbacks in Browns history, threw 154 touchdowns with 149 interceptions in his 10-year NFL career. In five of his 10 seasons, all with the Browns, Sipe threw more interceptions than touchdown passes.
In the 1980 season that finished with the infamous 'Red Right 88' pass in the end zone that was intercepted by the Raiders' Mike Davis, Sipe threw a franchise-record 30 touchdown passes, but also had 14 interceptions. The Browns were 11-5 and Sipe threw for 4,132 yards.
Sipe finished his 10-year career with 23, 713 passing yards. Winston still has the rest of this season to play and beyond, but he has thrown for 23, 867 passing yards in his 10 seasons to. date.
"It's something we talk about in the quarterback room that not all interceptions are created equal," Stefanski said. "And think of a tip ball, that's way different than throwing it right to the defense. So, I think that we had some miscommunication on the first one. The second one, I think just was not a great throw by Jameis. He wanted that ball more outside. And like I talked about before, he's not going to be perfect, you're going to miss throws.
"That's part of playing this position," he said. "You need to learn from each one of those. So as a quarterback, learning from each one of these reps is so important, but I don't want our quarterbacks to play a style where they're so careful and they're not, they're ultra conservative, they're not going to throw the ball down the field. That's just not a recipe for moving the ball either."
Winston, who was the No. 1 overall pick of the Buccaneers in the 2015 NFL Draft out of Florida State, where he won the Heisman Trophy, is well aware of the interception problem.
"I know I'm better than this," Winston said after the Broncos game. "I'm just praying for the Lord to deliver me from pick-sixes. That's just not me. A phenomenal game on offense, they did some great things. I messed it up."
Would the Browns look to Winston as the answer--even if it was as a short-term bridge situation?
There are numerous cases of quarterbacks that were drafted high that played their best football later in their careers. Jim Plunkett was a No. 1 overall draft choice of the Patriots in 1971 but bounced around to a couple of different teams before having a Hall of Fame career with the Raiders in the final eight seasons of his 16-year NFL career, leading them to two Super Bowl wins.
Rich Gannon was a fourth-round pick, who ended up playing 18 seasons in the NFL and was an All-Pro quarterback twice and was an NFL MVP. Most of his starts and success came in the back half of his long tenure in the NFL.
Sam Darnold has had a resurgence in 2024 and has led the Vikings to a 10-2 start this season.
After playing five seasons with the Buccaneers, Winston went to the Saints and was the primary backup to Drew Brees. The last time Winston had the opportunity to be a starter was in the 2021 season when he took over after Brees retired and started the first seven games before he tore his ACL and was lost for the season.
In those seven games, Winston was 5-2 as the starter, threw for 1,170 yards with 14 touchdowns and three interceptions. His rating was 102.8 and a QBR of 69.8.
The Browns can move forward and still be competitive in 2025 with their current quarterbacks, including Watson, financially, by the way they restructure contracts.
Overall, the Browns options are to re-sign Winston, look for a rookie in the 2025 NFL Draft, seek to trade or acquire a veteran free agent in the offseason. If they make the decision to move on from Watson, they can keep Watson on the roster and make him inactive every week.
Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman said this on the Monday Night Football telecast:"But the albatross is Deshaun Watson," he said. "If you go to Jameis Winston earlier in the year, does this look different? Because I would say the defensive struggles, in at least a small part, have had to do with how inept the offense has been moving the football."
Later on, Aikman re-visited the topic.
"You can't help but wonder what this year might have looked like for Cleveland if Jameis had taken over from the start, or at least much sooner than when he did. I know Deshaun Watson goes down with a torn Achilles. But it had been a real struggle offensively watching him."
The Browns defense played much better in the earlier part of the season and a case could be made the Browns could have won any of four games they lost due to the offense's play. The defense gave up 21 points in losses to the Giants (2-10) and Bengals (4-8) and 20 points in losses to the Raiders (2-10) and Eagles (10-2). In the Bengals loss, the special teams gave up a 100-yard kickoff to open the game.
The Browns lost two of those games by four points, one by six and one by seven points. Wins in even two of those games, would have the Browns still within earshot of making the playoffs.
Those four losses were on the offense as they could not score more than 16 points in any of those games. One can wonder what if the Browns would have turned to Winston, even in a relief role, would the outcome been different?
Winston was asked if he would want to stay with the Browns next season, being a pending free agent.
"I think anytime where you're able to solidify a role and a place and play good at that place, you like to be home," Winston said on Wednesday. "However, that's out of my control. Again, my focus is on, 'One play at a time' and just stacking it up day after day after day."
The players on offense have seen the impact that Winston has made.
"He has a huge impact," Nick Chubb said. "He's a special guy. He loves football and that rubs off on all of us. The energy and passion he brings every day, it's like slowly coming into everyone."
Winston has a chance to solidify his position as the Browns starting quarterback in the remainder of the season. Some think that if Winston plays too well, he would price himself out of the Browns price range, with quarterback-starved teams in the NFL, but the Browns have shown the way they have been able to restructure contracts, they have shown that they can manage it.
Winston signed a one-year contract for $4 million plus incentives as an unrestricted free agent in the offseason.
The Browns have the remainder of the season to evaluate their options moving forward at quarterback, but they are going to have to make a decision as to what they are going to do at the position very quickly after the season is over, if not before.
Currently at 3-9, the Browns would draft eighth in the NFL Draft with five games to play. Depending where the Browns end up drafting, the Browns might come to the conclusion that they need to draft one of the top prospects at quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft, but even so, the Browns might have a viable option to start for them in the 2025 season.
There is a proverbial saying 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' and the Merriam-Webster dictionary says that means that 'It is better to hold onto something one has than to risk losing it by trying to get something better'.
That vey well could apply to the Browns quarterback situation.
