Deshaun Watson will see his first live, on-field action since midway through the 2024 season on Saturday when the Browns play the Bears in their preseason opener. <\/p>\n
As Browns owner Jimmy Haslam put it, the Watson trade has been \u201ca big swing and a miss\u201d for the franchise. Watson hasn\u2019t played good football since 2020, when he led the league with 4,823 passing yards. But even then, Houston went 4-12.<\/p>\n
Then came the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, resulting in a suspension and more than 20 settled civil lawsuits. And finally came Watson\u2019s two Achilles tears since 2024.<\/p>\n
So it stands to reason that even as the Browns are giving Watson every opportunity to win a quarterback competition with Shedeur Sanders, Watson is unlikely to ever revert back to the player he was earlier in his career with Houston.<\/p>\n
Watson himself acknowledged this in his own way on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m different, man,\u201d Watson said in his press conference. \u201cI think, ever since I\u2019ve been here, early on bringing up Houston was cool, but I\u2019m 30 now and I\u2019ve had some injuries and things like that, so my game has definitely changed. But the mentality in how I play, and how I approach it, doesn\u2019t change.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think the biggest thing is just going out there, playing free, and letting my instincts take over. That\u2019s the biggest thing. Coach O\u2019Brien always told me to trust my instincts, so I think that\u2019s the biggest thing, just go out there, play free, and let the game come to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, head coach Todd Monken told reporters on Wednesday that he doesn\u2019t see why Watson can\u2019t regain his old form.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, first of all, I would never put limitations on a player. I\u2019d hate that he would do that,\u201d Monken said. \u201cWhy can\u2019t he be? Why can\u2019t he play like that? I don\u2019t know, I haven\u2019t seen it yet. I\u2019m not going to say he can\u2019t until I see it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of really good things over the course of the four or five months I\u2019ve been here. I\u2019m not going to put that on him. If he thinks he can\u2019t play like that, that\u2019s on him. I think he\u2019s done a lot of really good things athletically, making plays that we\u2019re going to get a chance to see, because we\u2019re not live. We\u2019ll see if that comes to play when we get out there and go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson is slated to play the first half of Saturday\u2019s game against the Bears. We\u2019ll all see what his performance looks like in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deshaun Watson will see his first live, on-field action since midway through the 2024 season on Saturday when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-812501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}