Browns Quarterback Decision Already Impacting Todd Monken’s First Season

On Saturday, Sanders led walkthroughs with the first team just to be demoted once the team hit the practice field, with Watson getting all starter reps. 

While Monken announced that Sanders would work with the starters on Monday -- “unless on the way out I change my mind,” he joked -- the sudden switch raised some questions. 

Are the Browns sticking to a plan for their quarterback competition?

Monken justified the switch saying he was told “Shedeur has been getting a few more reps with the ones,” which led him to decide “Yeah, sure, we’ll flip it and next week we’ll go the other way.”

This statement seems pretty innocuous -- an attempt to level out the reps out between Watson and Sanders. However, Monken said back in March that reps wouldn’t be divided evenly and, until now, the Browns seemed to stay on schedule alternating between Watson and Sanders. If dividing reps equally wasn't important and there’s still time to make up for a difference, why the sudden change on Saturday? 

Despite Monken saying “As long as we’re still sharing reps, it’s a competition”, the way in which said reps are shared says a lot, too.

Are the Browns giving Shedeur Sanders a fair shake?

Whether it was solely Monken, or general manager Andrew Berry and/or team owner Jimmy Haslam’s voice had any influence, we might not know for sure, but the Browns pulling Watson’s career out of the grave was certainly a remarkable turn of events during the offseason. 

In a vacuum, it makes perfect sense for a team like the Browns -- who’ve been without a franchise quarterback since last century -- to open up the competition for the best passer available, but Cleveland isn’t operating in a vacuum. 

According to almost anyone who has witnessed any portion of the competition in Cleveland, Watson hasn’t shown anything to suggest he should be the winner up to this point. Think about that. A 30-year old veteran who’s supposed to be in his prime, cost the team three first-round selections, a third-rounder and two fourths, and was handed a still NFL-record $230 million fully guaranteed five-year deal the moment he walked through the door can’t separate himself on a practice field from a second-year fifth rounder who’s in his very first training camp getting reps with the ones.

Given how the Browns have been managing Sanders for a year and a half, it's likely that had Watson showed any tangible evidence that could hint at viability as the team’s starter, he would have been named QB1 already. Remember, Monken wanted the competition wrapped up by minicamp. 

Did the Browns fumble the quarterback competition since the beginning? 

As we said before, an open battle in Cleveland sounds like a good idea, in a vacuum. But the Browns’ chosen contender to fight it out against Sanders, who ended last year on a high note and almost universally praised in the locker room was less than ideal, to put it mildly. 

Had the Browns chosen to put Sanders up against a high-to-mid round rookie, we might be witnessing a better battle. Or, maybe the Browns should have just trusted Sanders all along, as many of his teammates clearly do, tabbing Watson for a mentor-type role in the last year of his toxic deal. But the current competition doesn’t feel genuine. 

Fans shouldn't determine who starts at quarterback for an NFL franchise, but having them boo your hand-picked contender at training camp can’t be good, especially when you want to sell all those PSLs for your new stadium, set to open within a few years.

Either way, Monken’s first array into the NFL head coaching business doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders at the most important position in the game -- ironically, his field of expertise. And his handling of the quarterback competion has opened the doors for everyone to second-guess hi, in Cleveland.