Entering the preseason clash with the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson said he didn’t care how fans would react to him. As expected, they made sure to boo him relentlessly, effectively showing what they thought of him. Watson believes it didn’t affect him, but he did fire a shot back at the fans after losing 31-7 to the Bills.

“I didn’t have no reaction,” Watson said in the postgame presser. “I think the whole world knows it has nothing to do about the performance. It’s a little bit personal than that. I think that’s a disrespectful thing. I’m gonna keep whatever I feel with me and my family internally with how I feel about that and move on.”

Ever since joining the Browns in the blockbuster trade with the Houston Texans that involved the Browns offering Watson a fully guaranteed $230 million contract, the quarterback has been underwhelming. He came to Cleveland with an already poor reputation, and he failed to live up to whatever expectation the Browns had in him. To this day, Watson has yet to play a full season. His passing yardage in Cleveland over the past three seasons falls short of his 2020 4,823-yard haul. Team owner Jimmy Haslam called Watson’s trade to the Browns a “big swing and miss” back in March 2025.

Fans booed him during his entrance in the third quarter, and followed it up three more times, and they only got louder in the fourth quarter. Watson finished the game with 5 of 12 passes for 35 yards, including an interception.

During the press conference, Watson further talked about the instance when fans cheered as he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon on October 20, 2024, in the 21-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, and was carted off the field. Watson has since remained inactive, having torn the Achilles again in the 2025 offseason.

Several pundits considered the Watson trade to be among the worst in the league. Part of the reason is his off-field controversies; the Browns signed him knowing about them beforehand, and he’d served an 11-game suspension to start his journey with the Browns. In fact, negative sentiment had already become a part of his image before he arrived at Cleveland.

He was found to be the most hated player in Texas after a study conducted by BetOnline. After all, he’d asked for a trade from Houston despite the team offering him a $160 million extension only months before. And then came the sexual assault lawsuits from multiple women, which permanently tarnished his reputation.

“Sans for a handful of Browns diehards who will defend anything the franchise does and some who appear to be defiantly aligned with Watson, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone — in Cleveland or certainly elsewhere — with anything good to say about him as a player or a person,” Ben Axlerod wrote for Awful Announcing.

Moreover, his contract has financially dented the Browns badly. They had to give up three first-round picks in future drafts to trade Watson, which held them back from getting some top talents in the draft. Today, save for Denzel Ward, the Browns have lost all their actual star players: Myles Garrett (now with the Rams), Nick Chubb (retired), Amari Cooper (retired), and Joel Bitonio (retired).

No wonder Deshaun Watson is an unpopular figure in Cleveland.

When asked whether he could turn the negativity around, he said he doesn’t know yet, but took a shot at the fans, saying it feels like he gets “more love at road games” than at home games.

Watson also talked about what he had done to win back fans while being away from action for more than a year and a half.

Deshaun Watson talks about his failed attempt to win fans back

“I thought being away for two years…being around the facility,” Watson continued in the press conference. “Being around the city, doing charity work in the city, supporting the Cleveland Browns, hanging out with fans whenever I do see them, being honest, being the type of person that I know I am, and the character would help, and I guess it hasn’t.”

It seems like Deshaun Watson’s attempts to please his fans will not move the needle much, but head coach Todd Monken has offered a solution to help turn around the hatred.

“It’s a pretty easy question,” he said after the Bills game. “I don’t want to get booed. It comes with the territory. You don’t want to get booed? Let’s play good football. Let’s play good at quarterback, on offense and as a team, and then you won’t have to worry about all that, because it can turn just like that. Win, play good football, and everybody will be fine.”

Shedeur Sanders also commented on the fans booing Watson.

“I think we all need to understand that we’re all human,” he said. “I don’t really do things to humans I wouldn’t want done to me.”

But the thing is, Deshaun Watson needs to pull off a miracle of a performance to convince the skeptics that he deserves their appreciation. Doing good in the public eye will not be enough. Watson certainly didn’t make things better with his comments, but he believes things will change over time.

The Browns have lost both their preseason games and will look to return to form, with Watson also finding his footing.