Todd Monken admits mistake with Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders

With a new regime in place, the Cleveland Browns still had to decide who would start at quarterback.

While all signs pointed to Shedeur Sanders as the obvious choice, new head coach Todd Monken gave both signal-callers a blank slate and let them fight it out through training camp.

Ultimately, Deshaun Watson got the nod over the second-year quarterback in one of the most polarizing decisions in recent years.

But now, after watching him play much better in Week 2 and lead the team to its first win of the season, Monken thinks he didn't do Watson any favors by not giving him all the first-team reps in training camp.

Todd Monken admits the Browns' QB competition hurt Deshaun Watson

“While we were doing the quarterback competition, he split reps with the ones for a while, and that benefited Shedeur, but it maybe didn’t benefit the guy that ended up being the starter,” Monken admitted. “There’s no way around that. I mean, that’s obvious, that you want to get the guys reps with the guys you’re playing with.”

That makes sense to a degree, though there was no way of knowing Watson would be even slightly better than he had been since he arrived in Berea.

He was coming off a long injury layoff, and he hadn't been that great when healthy anyway.

Monken, however, still thinks he's only going to keep improving as he gets his legs back under him and more reps with the first team:

“You could see the difference from week one to week two, and I think we’re just going to continue to grow together,” the coach continued.

Ironically, this comes just days after some speculated Watson might be benched ahead of the home opener.

But after watching him lead the team to a big road upset, and judging by what Monken just said, it looks like it will be a while before Sanders gets another shot, if at all.