The wait is mercifully over, and the Cleveland Browns finally came out appointing Deshaun Watson as the club’s starting quarterback.While in itself, this decision should come as no surprise for anyone who’s been following the team since February -- when Watson was shockingly thrust into an open competition with Shedeur Sanders -- it is truly a wild development after Watson’s post-game presser debacle last Saturday, when he proceeded to speak out against the fans for being booed following another disastrous performance on the field. However, as Cleveland gears up for the regular season, the club faces another monumental challenge -- one that would have persisted even if head coach Todd Monken would have decided in favor of Sanders as the Browns’ Week 1 starter. Watson will be expected to play well after a full season splitting first-team reps with Sanders, unlike 29 other NFL teams that had the luxury of knowing who their starter is or was going to be from early on. That means Cleveland is playing catch-up from the get-go.The only other teams that took valuable reps away from their eventual starting quarterback are the Falcons (where Michael Penix Jr. missed out on a lot of work due to injury anyway), and Vikings (who tabbed Kyler Murray over J.J. McCarthy a couple of weeks ago). Even in Arizona, Jacoby Brissett reported in time to get most of the workload over the summer after a lengthy holdout early in the offseason.To make things worse, there’s an argument to be made that Murray and Tagovailoa -- if he wins out for the Falcons -- have played better football more recently than Watson, putting Cleveland in what looks like the direst quarterback situation in the NFL.Make no mistake, had Monken elected to go with Sanders, the Browns would be staring at the same exact issue, compounded by the fact that Sanders didn’t receive first team reps last year either, up until the moment he had to sub in for a concussed Dillon Gabriel in Week 11, meaning he’s been extremely limited in his exposure to the first-string offense after two full offseasons as a pro.And don’t forget that Monken himself admitted that Watson didn’t do “anything specific” to separate himself from Sanders during the competition, which is a little puzzling. Was an open competition a good idea to begin with in Cleveland?It’s hard to say, because to be honest, there were never any clear-cut good choices to start with. The two worst quarterback seasons over the last two years in EPA per play belong to Watson’s 2024 and Sanders’ 2025. And the fact that last year’s third-rounder Dillon Gabriel was never even considered as part of the competition this year speaks volumes, as well.Over the last two years, among 78 qualifying quarterbacks, Shedeur Sanders' 2025 performance ranked 77th in EPA per pass play. The only performance that was worse statistically? Deshaun Watson's 2024, which ranked 78th.— Sheil Kapadia (@SheilKapadia) August 24, 2026Nonetheless, the Browns are now betting on a soon-to-be 31-year old quarterback who has tallied one three-touchdown game and four two-touchdown games in the four years he’s been in Cleveland. “Ultimately, we expect him to play well, or we wouldn’t be starting him,” said Monken on Monday, after announcing his decision to the press. At this point, we have to question if it’s realistic to expect Watson to do well after a year off coming back from back-to-back Achilles’ tears and an offseason with maybe a little more than half the prep a normal NFL starter would have been afforded.In that sense, the Browns are stuck in a pretty awful football version of the chicken or the egg dilemma, a loop where bad quarterback play leads to splitting practice reps, which in turn is very likely to lead to even more bad quarterback play due to a lack of proper preparation.Many are projecting the Browns to come away with one of the top quarterback prospects in next year’s draft, where they own two first-round picks. But the road from here to there is already looking like a painful one. Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow