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By Rowan Fisher-Shotton
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The Cleveland Browns' decision to make Deshaun Watson their starting quarterback has always been puzzling.
He's coming off two torn Achilles tendons and hadn't played football in nearly two years. He looked bad in the preseason and even criticized his own fanbase after one preseason game. Yet, he entered Week 1 with a real chance to prove everybody wrong.
Instead, he went just 16 of 22 for 202 yards and one touchdown, with one interception and a fumble, while taking five sacks and failing to move the ball downfield all game as the Browns fell 34-10 to the Jaguars. Still, head coach Todd Monken has insisted it wasn't all on Watson, and he's expected to start again in Week 2 against the Buccaneers.
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But apparently, the Browns could be playing a much bigger game than we realize. According to NFL insider Jason La Canfora, league executives believe that Watson doesn't want to be there and is playing poorly on purpose, turning fans and media against him in an effort to force the Browns' hand and get himself benched.
"He doesn't want to be there. He never wanted to be there," La Canfora reported one NFL GM telling him. "[Jimmy] Haslam wants Arch Manning, that's what this is really all about."
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Watson is entering the final year of the five-year, $230 million contract the Browns signed him to in 2022. If the Browns were to cut him, they'd take on a massive dead cap hit of around $126.4 million, so releasing him isn't really an option.
What they could do, though, is keep playing him now, with little hope that he can actually turn things around, before inevitably turning to Shedeur Sanders. La Canfora noted how NFL execs also suspect Sanders will get the start by Week 3 and Watson will be benched.
"He'll keep playing like [expletive] to see how fast they'll pull him. He's calling their bluff," La Canfora wrote.
La Canfora hints that the Browns don't really want either Watson or Sanders long-term, though, and would seemingly rather tank to land Texas quarterback Arch Manning. Manning is projected to be one of the top players off the board in the 2027 NFL Draft, alongside other top signal-callers like Dante Moore, Darian Mensah, and CJ Carr.
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