DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Deshaun Watson today

Even taking emotion out of it, him sustaining another season-ending injury is probably the best case scenario for both this season and next. That sounds crappy to say, but with his recent and historic performance, wanting to see what we have in the young'ins and the WRs, and the insurance policy that gives us salary cap relief for next year, this is logically pretty clear.

Let him play until the wheel falls off the wagon.

FYI: It appears that there is no insurance that covers 2026.

And Bone is spot on (again)...DW thinks he's practicing and playing well. Remarkable.

:-(

Well, that's some b.s.

And thanks a lot, Willie... couldn't you have just waited til 0-3 when full apathy set in before you told us that??

Agreed and IMO all this could be having a negative effect on the team. It can't be good for team morale.

When an organization finds itself in a vulnerable position and faces intense media pressure, the people in charge will normally try to control the flow of information. The last thing they need is a series of poorly considered statements creating even more problems.

Management can, for example, tell everyone to keep a low profile until the media storm has calmed down. Careless or controversial comments often create more questions than answers, drain energy from the organization, and shift the focus toward all the wrong things.

This falls within the general manager’s area of responsibility and decision-making. So, once again, the problems created by Watson’s comments ultimately become a leadership issue.

You cannot completely prevent employees from speaking publicly, but you can coordinate the communication and try to control the flow of information.

Of course, it is possible that Andrew Berry is deliberately allowing Watson to keep talking and dig his own grave. If that is the strategy, it represents an extremely sophisticated form of leadership requiring long-term and carefully calculated planning.

I would genuinely love to believe that is what we are witnessing. Unfortunately, I have never seen that level of professional management from this organization before.

That is why I lean toward the simpler explanation: most things in Berea appear to be reactive rather than proactive. Things happen to them instead of the organization shaping the narrative and directing events through intelligent leadership and carefully planned communication.

Perhaps Berry really is playing four-dimensional chess and allowing Watson to eliminate himself from the equation. If so, it may be the first master plan in NFL history that looks exactly like nobody has a plan.

I think the plan all along was for Watson to start the two opening away games to protect Shedufus, then start Shedufus at home. The best case is Shedufus plays well enough that we can trade him either this season or going in to next. He can't be on the team once we draft a new QB.

J/c
Lots of speculation, which is understandable, but I draw the line at some of the motivational guesswork implying Berry wants Watson to talk himself out of a job or something.... I was never a Stefanski fan other than his anomaly COVID season, but even when he left TJ Watt one on one with the 3rd strong OT on back to back (to back?) plays and we saw watt run free and clear thru to the QB... I never tried to suggest it was anything other than bad coaching, not buying into a HC trying to deliberately get his player injured.

We'll watch this play out. It looked/felt like Monken was damn close to yanking Watson in game 1. I don't expect to see Watson finish the TB game if he is so inept again.

I do expect to see improvement from DW and the team... Hard to play that badly again.

Anyone else actively rooting against him? Petty, I know. But I admit part me hopes he sucks eggs Sunday and makes the decision easy for the team. I just want to be done with him and his whining once and for all.

I don’t think salvation lies with any other qb on this team but I so want is to wash our hands of this debacle and move the F on. So to that end, I hate to say it but I’m actually sorta hoping for a faceplant. A couple early ints and Monken practically has to yank. I think if he plays half way ok Monken might potentially hang on for a few more weeks. Might be part of a tank strategy, I don’t know.

Post game press conferences are standard operating procedure across the league. Just stop it already. What watson said isn't an Andrew Berry issue. It's a DW issue. I'm not a fan of Berry. But I'm not just going to make crap up to attack him.

Now if the Browns can just get every team to play backups against watson things migtht be fine.

The entire media buildup to the Bucs game has turned into a debate about who was right and who was wrong.

Deshaun vs. Baker.
The Browns vs.Baker.
Deshaun vs. the fans and the media.
Deshaun vs. everything and nothing.

Right now, most of the local, national and the social media are portraying the Browns as incompetent idiots.

Watson’s attack on the media briefly shifted the focus. Ask yourselves whether that helped or hurt the Browns’ chances of winning both the media battle and the actual game?

“Browns gonna Brown” has been making the rounds among commentators all over the place.

The Browns are sitting proudly at top of the McAfee Shajt Division, and everyone is laughing themselves to tears. The discussion is no longer whether the Browns are bad. It’s whether they’re terrible, worse, or the absolute worst. That’s the landscape right now.

Watson opening his mouth and speaking freely was a gift from heaven. Talk about removing any remaining doubts.

If I were Andrew Berry, I’d keep my head down, stay in the shadows, and keep sending Watson out on new adventures.
What could possibly go wrong?

If Tampa hammers another nail into the coffin the “shajt” conversation will continue.
Who do you want in front of the cameras. Monken, Berry or Watson?
I know who I prefer.

Maybe Berry is a little bit smarter then we think…

You can pretty much bet we'll be playing Carolina with an 0-2 record. I don't see us beating Tampa and I don't think we'll come close to covering. As always, I hope I'm wrong and we win but I just don't see it. Maybe this has been the FO's plan all along.

I think we all have opinions on the situation so I'll just add mine.

Looking at this on a non bias basis, it seems Halsam has forgiven Berry for the watson debacle. Of course none of us know who really made the huge push to sign watson to begin with. If it was Haslam that may help explain it although we'll never know for sure if that was the case. But at least to me if Berry were going to be held accountable for the watson deal he would have been shown the door when Stefanski was fired. Yet he remains.

Now I have seen so many people say, "But look at the last two drafts!" And that's all fine and well but Stefanski was fired before this last draft and Berry only had one of those drafts under his belt at the time. There's a funny thing about NFL drafts. A lot of the time they look good on paper. Sometimes even their rookie seasons give you cause to be optimistic. But as we all know, when you buy a car the first 10k miles tells you nothing about how that car will perform or how dependable it will be for the long haul and so it also goes with draft picks.

IMO Haslam knows this team has no QB. I believe for him this season is a write off. That no matter how bad it turns out to be Berry will still be at the helm next season. As a matter of fact I believe there's a very strong possibility Haslam may see the worse record possible as the best case scenario to land a franchise QB. That would be in his best interest for the future success of this franchise. A new "QB of the future" going into a new dome stadium paints what I think would be the best picture moving forward for him he could have dreamed of at this juncture given the current circumstances.

If Haslam ends up desperate for a scapegoat it will once again be the HC and Monken will be one and done and it will be blamed on the fact he didn't get enough out of the roster he was given. That remains to be seen. It would be a repeat of what we saw last off season. But one thing I think it would be impossible to deny is that if this season continues down the path it is currently on, you either believe the actual problem is with this FO and not the coaching.

Unless you think this FO is incapable of finding an actual NFL HC. Which would still be the fault of this FO. That's where this all begins and ends.

As it pertains to how the media perceives this team, that's irrelevant. It's a two way street that allows for the possibility that traffic can flow in either direction. Either a team can crumble under the pressures of social media and the talking heads, which would indicate they are very weak people, or they can use it as ammunition to rally around each other and use it as a motivator.

Sometimes game film of a players propensities helps you arrive at a much more informed decision. Practice and preseason gives you no idea how a player performs when the bullets start flying. Game film does.

[color:#FFFFCC]bone\pit...Montaric Brown is a starting CB[color and he had decent coverage on Boston.

Watson threw a near perfect pass...

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/htCST_fVFKE[/video]

The Jacksonville Jaguars began pulling multiple defensive starters by the middle of the third quarter during their dominant 34-10 Week 1 victory over the Cleveland Browns.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/jaguars-defense-sets-tone-2026-201157473.html

But hey, at least that CB was a starter.