Ever since the Cleveland Browns made Deshaun Watson their starting quarterback for the 2026 season, most of the criticism for it has been directed at head coach Todd Monken, who made it official. But for NFL Network analyst and former NFL defensive end Gerald McCoy, we only have the Haslam family to blame.

“Did they make the right decision?” McCoy asked on NFL GameDay Morning. “For Jimmy Haslam? Yes. For the fans and the players? No. Jimmy Haslam, you heard him say in the music video, you put all the blame on the owner. Yeah, well, we are putting all the blame on you because you paid for him and you brought him in, and he’s had ample time to show you what he is, and we just haven’t seen it. What we’ve seen in preseason, it was 50-50. It wasn’t that far of a race when you say, ‘You know what? Let’s go with Deshaun Watson.’

“So, you traded away a generational talent in Myles Garrett because you wanted to go younger. You have Shedeur Sanders, who is young, and he’s right there in your locker room. Just go young. What was the point of saying you’re going younger if you got this guy sitting right here? There’s no way he can lose and then come home and play a game in front of those fans, with what he said and what he did.”

The process of unpacking all this begins in 2022, when the Browns mortgaged their future, sending the first-round picks of ‘22, ‘23, and ‘24 alongside three other middle-round picks. Watson was already under fire for multiple lawsuits at the time. A $230 million, fully guaranteed, five-year deal flipped the QB market on its head as general manager Andrew Berry said the Browns “have a lot of faith in him.”

But the lawsuits caught up, and the NFL slapped him with an 11-game suspension in August 2022 and a $5 million fine. The Dawg Pound, hoping for Watson’s dominance, was dealt a blow they could never recover from. And that was even before the injuries started piling up.

In 2023. Watson missed three games with a rotator cuff injury. He came back in Week 7 for one quarter before injuring that same shoulder. Week 10 landed him a displaced fracture in his shoulder. While he played through the game, he wouldn’t suit up for another game that season.

Then came the ultimate crucible of 2024. Over five weeks, Watson posted just a 23.9 QBR and went 1-4. By Week 7, the fanbase had given up. They booed him when he walked through the tunnel, and cheered when he tore his Achilles. 2025 should have been the redemption arc after all the adversity, but Watson re-ruptured his Achilles in January, and by March, Jimmy Haslam was calling him a “big swing and miss.” Exactly one year later, Haslam changed his tune once again.

“The reality is he’s had major injuries. His shoulder, tore his Achilles twice. So he’s been really ravaged by injuries, and that, along with the 11-game suspension, has kept him from playing,” Haslam said this March. “Deshaun has a great chance – a fresh start with an offensive-minded coach who has, in the past, been able to work with all kinds of different quarterbacks and make them successful. So Deshaun has a great chance to do that now.”

Despite Haslam’s vote of confidence, Watson hasn’t really earned it – that’s the general sentiment around the league anyway. The 30-year-old QB had struggled with accuracy all camp while his counterpart – second-year QB Shedeur Sanders – has outplayed him in every aspect. If the training camp boos directed at Watson weren’t enough, the Dawg Pound made its feelings heard once again in the preseason.

In the face of the preseason boos, Watson ripped into the fanbase. But when he became the starter, he changed his tune and delivered an apology and a promise to win games for Cleveland this season. Now, he has two road games to prove himself before he comes back to face the fanbase at home. But, as Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio noted recently, all of this has happened because of Jimmy Haslam.

“In Cleveland, I firmly believe Jimmy Haslam makes all the decisions and owns none of them,” Florio said in August. “Andrew Berry would be long gone if he was the one who said, in 2022, ‘I got an idea. Two words: Deshaun Watson.’ If that was him who originated it, pursued it aggressively, upped the ante when they got the tap on the shoulder in the four-team dance contest that they were the first ones out, and then swung back around with 230 million fully guaranteed.

“If that was all Andrew Berry, and Jimmy Haslam was sitting back saying, ‘Hey man, I pay you to make these decisions,’ he’d be gone by now. It’s clearly coming from above, and this is the last-ditch effort to get anything positive out of the 230 million.”

But Watson is just one part of the bigger broken puzzle. The jagged piece that hurt the Dawg Pound the most was the trade of 2025 Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett. When the NFL sack-leader of last season got traded to the Los Angeles Rams, Andrew Berry offered a long explanation for why this move was necessary. From that explanation, one part seems to have stuck with Gerald McCoy, which he has referenced now.

“We, and more importantly, our fans, have grown up with Myles, and he’s an enormous source of pride for our team. However, as we embark on a new era of Browns football with a young core and a replenished asset base, we felt this move was important to our transition.”

If the Browns wanted to rely on a young core, 24-year-old Shedeur Sanders would have been the perfect man to lock down the room. But choosing Watson and handing Sanders the backup role goes against that narrative, and it’s something the fanbase – and analysts – have already called them out for.

Now, one good season won’t erase the questions about Jimmy Haslam’s leadership. But Deshaun Watson has at least one season to bring something positive to Cleveland and prove everyone wrong. Time will tell whether he can do it, or Haslam calls it a mistake once again.