Deshaun Watson as the Browns’ starting quarterback again? PFN’s Ian Cummings says not so fast, and Cleveland’s own owner gave him the opening line.
Jimmy Haslam called the 2022 Watson trade “a big swing and miss” at the league meetings, owning a deal that cost the Browns three first-round picks and a record $230 million fully guaranteed contract. Cummings goes further. Keeping Watson around at all is the mistake now.
“Deshaun Watson is not the answer,” Cummings said on the Hot List. “He never was.” And, in his view, he never will be.
Why Deshaun Watson Isn’t the Browns’ Answer
The case starts with the play, and the numbers are grim. Across his Browns tenure, Watson has completed 61% of his passes with 19 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, and he has played just 19 games since the trade. By PFN’s QB Impact metric, his 2024 score of 51.1 ranked as the sixth-worst qualifying mark the system has ever logged.
This is not the quarterback who led the NFL with 4,823 passing yards and threw a Texans-record 33 touchdowns in 2020. “We’re not dealing with the same Deshaun Watson,” Cummings said. “He’s not slinging it like he used to. You watch the film, he simply is a liability for the offense.”
The injuries explain much of it. Watson missed 11 games to his 2022 suspension, then lost chunks of 2023 to a shoulder injury and 2024 to a torn Achilles. He re-tore the Achilles in early 2025, needed a second surgery, and missed the entire season. He turns 31 in September, and the recent track record for older quarterbacks returning from Achilles tears, Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins among them, is not encouraging.
Then there is the off-field history Cummings refuses to set aside. Two dozen women filed civil suits accusing Watson of sexual misconduct during massage sessions, and he served an 11-game suspension in 2022 along with a $5 million fine and mandatory evaluation and counseling.
Independent disciplinary officer Sue L. Robinson found he violated the personal-conduct policy, while two Texas grand juries declined to bring criminal charges, and Watson denied wrongdoing. The civil suits were settled confidentially, with no admission of liability and undisclosed terms.
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“We don’t have to feel good about that result in the court of public opinion,” Cummings said.
The Contract Trap and the 2027 Way Out
The reason Watson is still in Cleveland is simpler than football or character. It is the money. His restructured deal carries a 2026 cap hit near $45 million, and a no-trade clause makes dealing him impossible without his sign-off. Releasing him outright in 2026 would trigger a staggering $131 million in dead cap.
That is why the Browns built an exit ramp. By cutting Watson with a post-June 1 designation in 2027, they can split roughly $86.2 million in dead money into a 2027 charge and a $51.5 million hit in 2028. Painful, but survivable, and Cummings argues it is the only honest path.
“They should just bite the bullet and split that dead cap over the 2027 and 2028 offseasons, and just move on,” he said.
The timing works because the Browns are loaded with draft capital. The Myles Garrett trade landed them a second first-round pick in 2027 as part of an 11-pick haul, and PFN’s early board has two quarterbacks in the top 10 in Oregon’s Dante Moore and Texas’ Arch Manning, with risers like Notre Dame’s CJ Carr behind them. Cleveland also has Shedeur Sanders on hand from the 2025 draft, but it has yet to settle its long-term answer.
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The bill will hurt for years. Cummings says pay it anyway.
“This is what it takes to finally move on from a Deshaun Watson situation that has been an abject disaster,” he said. “I say it’s worth the cost, and I say it’s worth finally turning the page.”
