Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam gave an update on quarterback Deshaun Watson this week.
Haslam suggested that Watson could go from being a “swing and miss” to a “home run” if he starts for the team this upcoming season after nursing his Achilles injury. Browns insider Mary Kay Cabot reported on X:
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“#Browns owner Jimmy Haslam believes it’s possible for Deshaun Watson to go from “a swing and a miss” to a home run if he starts this year.”
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Fans didn’t seem to appreciate that comment very much. Check out some of their reactions from the comments below.
“Dude is an idiot,” a fan said.
Check out even more disappointed reactions from fans here.
“I sincerely doubt that Haslam knows the Browns are a football team,” another fan said.
“They’re just attempting to spark enough interest for a trade,” one fan claimed.
“Watson is a creep, he shouldn’t be in the league, Cleveland wants to win but, they won’t put up with creeps as their quarterbacks,” said another.
The Cleveland Browns traded away three first-round draft picks, a third-round pick, and two fourth-round picks to the Houston Texans for Watson. Shortly after the trade, Cleveland also signed Watson to a monstrous, fully guaranteed, five-year, $230 million deal.
At the time of the signing, it was the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history. However, Watson was suspended for the first 11 games of his career as a Brown due to a sexual harassment allegations investigation.
Deshaun Watson experiment has been an utter failure for the Cleveland Browns
In his 2023 season with the Browns, Watson suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in Week 10 that would sideline him for the rest of the year.
The following season in 2024, Watson was off to a very poor start performance-wise, and it got worse in Week 7, when the signal-caller suffered another season-ending injury, this time with a ruptured Achilles tendon. While Watson was rehabbing in January of 2025, he re-ruptured his Achilles, meaning he’d miss the entirety of the 2025 NFL season.
Cleveland has since attempted to find a new quarterback by drafting the likes of Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders in the 2025 NFL Draft. Neither of those options seemed to blow Cleveland away, with the starting quarterback role still very much in question as the new season approaches.
With Watson likely healthy and ready to compete in 2026, he could very well come back in and reclaim Cleveland’s starting signal-caller role from the young stars.
Edited by Chaitanya Prakash
