{"id":399221,"date":"2026-09-14T06:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/399221\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T06:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:34:36","slug":"deshaun-watson-browns-faceplant-vs-jaguars-how-long-will-todd-monken-stick-with-his-qb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/399221\/","title":{"rendered":"Deshaun Watson, Browns faceplant vs. Jaguars: How long will Todd Monken stick with his QB?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage<\/a> of \u201cSunday Night Football\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trevor Lawrence carved up the Cleveland Browns\u2019 defense for four touchdown passes as the Jacksonville Jaguars cruised to a 34-10 Week 1 victory.<\/p>\n

Deshaun Watson, who was named the Browns\u2019 starting quarterback over Shedeur Sanders before the season, had a forgettable performance, throwing for 205 yards, one touchdown and an interception and failing to get the offense going until the team\u2019s final drive of the game.<\/p>\n

The Browns\u2019 defense struggled to get off the field and the offense wasn\u2019t able to produce much of anything. It was 24-0 at halftime and things didn\u2019t get much better in the second half. The Browns didn\u2019t score their first three points until the 8:31 mark of the third quarter \u2014 and even that was set up by Raheim Sanders\u2019 62-yard kick return.<\/p>\n

All told, it was an inauspicious debut for Browns coach Todd Monken, who could have a decision to make at quarterback sooner than expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey better get us now,\u201d Monken said after the game. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a good, young group. We just didn\u2019t play well today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleveland will next travel to Tampa to face the Buccaneers in Week 2, while the Jaguars head to Denver to face the Broncos in an early AFC showdown.<\/p>\n

Box score<\/a> | Week 1 live blog<\/a> | Game discussion<\/a><\/p>\n

Top Plays from Browns @ Jaguars<\/p>\n

Watson couldn\u2019t move the offense. Is it already time to consider a QB change?<\/p>\n

This is a tough one because the Browns never had a real reason to think Watson could still play at a high level. This expensive experiment failed long ago, but the Browns felt compelled to double down again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t all (on) him,\u201d Monken said of Watson postgame. \u201cCertainly could have called it better. Certainly could have played better around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

After not playing for almost two years, Watson is unsurprisingly the same player. He\u2019s turnover-prone, no longer scares defenses with his mobility and doesn\u2019t look to get the ball downfield often enough. Monken believed Watson would give the Browns a chance to have a clean overall operation, but that didn\u2019t happen Sunday.<\/p>\n

After the game, the coach didn\u2019t outright commit to Watson as the team\u2019s Week 2 starter, but he also defended his quarterback.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy decision-making is what\u2019s best for the Browns, now and moving forward. That doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t understand the frustration,\u201d Monken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to analyze everything: how we coach, starting with me. How we do it offensively and defensively, and Deshaun is a part of that. Quarterback always is and always will be. \u2026 Until I get a chance to watch it and really drill down, it\u2019s unfair for me to really comment on any one player, because it\u2019s never as bad as you think and it\u2019s never as good as you think.\u201d \u2014 Zac Jackson, Browns reporter<\/p>\n

Why did the Browns\u2019 defense struggle so much vs. Lawrence?<\/p>\n

This was a preparation mismatch. The game flow certainly didn\u2019t help the Browns\u2019 cause, but Lawrence came out firing and completed 18 of 23 passes for 245 yards and those four TD passes for a QB rating of 150.6. Jaguars receivers were regularly open, and Parker Washington was able to adjust and make contested catches in big moments.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Cleveland defense was an exhausted mess with temperatures reaching the mid-90s, but the main point is that the Browns were a mess overall. Liam Coen\u2019s game plan was sound, and Cleveland\u2019s defense got next to no help from its offense, accelerating the inevitable. \u2014 Jackson<\/p>\n

Is this game more an indication of how good the Jaguars are, or how bad the Browns are?<\/p>\n

There certainly are elements of both, but the Cleveland offense was hopeless. Lawrence got hot early \u2014 many of his targets were running wide-open \u2014 but the story of the day was the Browns doubling down on putting Watson on the field when that plan clearly has no chance to succeed.<\/p>\n

There was one good team advancing its overall program on the field Sunday, and the Browns were little more than a speed bump. The Browns did few things right and will take almost no positives into another Florida trip next week when they visit the Buccaneers. \u2014 Jackson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of \u201cSunday Night Football\u201d. Trevor Lawrence carved up the Cleveland Browns\u2019 defense for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10575,116,118,121,117,119],"class_list":["post-399221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}