BEREA, Ohio — It's been 1,025 days since the Cleveland Browns and Deshaun Watson reached an agreement on a $230 million guaranteed contract and the Browns made the trade with the Houston Texans to acquire what they hoped would be their franchise quarterback.
There was hope that Watson would elevate the offense and help lead the Browns to championship contention.
But 1,025 days later and Watson has played in just 19 games over three seasons in Cleveland.
In his first year, Watson played just six games due to an 11-game suspension stemming from violating the league's personal conduct policy after dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct were filed against him. Then, in his second year, it was a season-ending shoulder injury that saw him miss 11 games last season.
This past season it was an Achilles injury after he played in just seven games.
Now, Watson has sustained a "setback" in his Achilles injury recovery, according to Browns general manager Andrew Berry.
The details are sparse at this point. Berry said that in their end-of-year process, all the players go through exit physicals. During Watson's physical, the quarterback brought up that something felt off. The Browns learned of the medical setback Sunday.
Berry couldn't say if the setback would take Watson out for the entire 2025 season, but with an already serious injury that was expected to see him sidelined for at least part of next season, that seems like a strong possibility.
Monday, for the first time since making the trade, Berry openly acknowledged the failure that it's been.
"I think that to date the trade hasn't gone as we had hoped or anticipated, hasn't gone how Deshaun has hoped or anticipated. I think certainly a big part of it is the stop-start with availability and that we never have gotten consistent performance at that position," Berry said. "I think there's a variety of factors in that. That's not just the quarterback. We all share in culpability with that. But one thing is, we've never been afraid to take big swings on things that we think can help the team and help the organization."
Watson was a big swing. The Browns gave up six draft picks and bankrolled the quarterback with the most guaranteed money in NFL history at the time.
They overlooked the offseason issues Watson faced. They overlooked the fact that he hadn't played a regular season game in 700 days when he made his debut with the Browns. They overlooked that Watson failed to have a game where he threw for more than 300 yards.
The Browns remained hopeful that they could navigate through Watson's struggles.
But sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and that time has come for the Browns and Watson.
"We have to have consistent availability and consistent performance at the QB position as well, and that's something that's been elusive for us for the past couple seasons and that's something that we have to be able to fix and remedy," Berry said.
Watson hasn't been available, and even when he has been, the Browns have sold out what works for them offensively, hoping to cater to Watson.
Players have openly begun to acknowledge their frustrations with the operations of the team centered around one individual.
When asked what it would take for things to work with Watson at quarterback, tackle Jack Conklin was candid about the team needing to do what's best for all rather than one.
"I think it's just creating our own identity is what this team needs. I think creating around an individual makes things tough for everybody else. So I think you got to stick with what this team's been built around and if we can do that I think we can have a lot of success with that part of it," Conklin said.
Veteran guard Joel Bitonio admitted that the shift away from the style of offense they've operated under without Watson on the field. He believes getting back to that is the first step, which means the end of catering to the QB and the beginning of focusing more on the team.
"I think that's what coach Stefanski's comfortable with, the marriage of the run and the pass, you take your shots with some play-action heavy things. I think it's what we've had the most success under, and I think it's what coach Stefanski is most comfortable with. The line was kind of built that way as well," Bitonio said. "I thought me and Wyatt [Teller] as pullers running some outside zone, I think that was what I did well in my career, and I probably pulled less than 10 times this year overall. And there were games in my career where I pulled eight or 10 times in a game, so it was different, for sure, but I think that's where the strength of offense is and we can build it up, get the right people in the right position."
A focus on "team" is what the players want. The Browns want to retain their "cornerstone" pieces, as Berry said on Monday, so that should be at the top of their minds.
Those are conversations he has with players, especially players like star defensive end Myles Garrett, who said he wanted to see the Browns' plans for the future before he would commit to remaining with the team his entire career, not looking to be a part of a rebuild.
"We've always believed in having direct and honest communication with our players. It's something that we do regularly. It's something that we do particularly the longer term things, really more at the end of the year. That's what we view as more of an appropriate time as opposed to the end of the season. So that's something that has been a regular part of our, I guess a part of our fabric," Berry said. "And look, everyone in the organization has so much invested in this time, energy, sweat equity, and I think you guys know Myles, he wants to win. He puts everything into it and he's one of our cornerstone players."
Fixing the issue and healing the wounds of the unsuccessful Watson trade begins with admitting what has transpired hasn't worked, something Berry also acknowledged with a euphemism in his opening statements Monday morning.
I was recently listening to John Maxwell talk. John Maxwell, he's a former pastor, longtime leadership executive coach. He was like a New York Times bestseller. He was talking about the topic of how to get a positive return on failure. He used this term, he talked about good misses and bad misses, and it stuck with me because I've listened to Kevin coach quarterbacks for five years, and he uses the same terminology. Where it's like, 'Hey, you're going to miss throws, but let's make sure they're a good miss or a bad miss.' The way John categorized good failure, or excuse me, good misses versus bad misses is, with good misses, they force you to adjust. They're failures where you learn and you have to adjust. Where the bad misses, they're the ones where you don't learn anything and you make excuses. We have a lot of good people in our organization from a core group of players, good coaches, good people in football operations. We will make adjustments and we will learn from this and we'll grow for this, I will learn from this and I will grow from this, to ultimately deliver the results that our fan base deserve and our organization deserve.
The Browns swung big on Watson. They whiffed. It was a mistake that, perhaps, shouldn't have taken as long as it did to correct, but entering 2025, it appears to finally be something the organization is willing to admit to and address.
Berry will have the tall task of beginning his corrections in both free agency and the upcoming draft.
"We've never been afraid to take big swings on things that we think can help the team and help the organization. Sometimes you'll hit and sometimes they won't go quite according to plan, but the one thing that we always do look at is you understand with any business where you take on risk or where you make decisions, you understand that there is both upside and downside. There's no such thing as a riskless transaction, and one thing that we always do want to do is really protect our downside as much as you can and we will be positioned moving forward both from a cap perspective and I hate how we got here, but with having the second pick in the draft, whether we select a player or use it to maximize in another way. It gives us an opportunity to really pivot if we need to," Berry said.
