Former Clemson star Deshaun Watson is competing with second-year pro Shedeur Sanders for the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback job, with Browns head coach Todd Monken having yet to name the regular-season Week 1 starter.
Unfortunately, Watson has already been named the starting quarterback for a different team — the 2026 CBS Sports NFL All-Overpaid Team.
Watson is entering the final year of his deal in 2026. In March 2022, he signed a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract with the Browns after being traded to Cleveland from the Houston Texans. The Browns gave away a bunch of draft picks (including three first-round picks) in the deal.
CBS Sports writer Garrett Podell heavily criticized Watson’s deal, calling it the “worst contract in NFL history.”
Here’s what Podell wrote about Watson, who played in just six games in his first season with Cleveland in 2022 after having to serve a suspension and then was limited to just six games in 2023, seven in 2024 and zero in 2025 due to season-ending injuries:
Deshaun Watson’s five-year, $230 million contract, fully guaranteed, is the worst contract in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns inked him to that deal after trading a 2022 first-round pick, 2023 and 2024 first-round picks, a 2022 fourth-round pick, a third-round pick in 2023 and a fourth-round pick in 2024 in exchange for the three-time Houston Texans Pro Bowler and a 2024 sixth-round pick.
The high-level play in Houston that enticed Cleveland to make that deal occurred before his off-field legal issues surfaced, resulting in a league-issued suspension that kept him out for the entire 2021 season and the first 11 games of 2022. When he’s played in his limited 19-start tenure as the Browns’ starting quarterback, he’s been one of the NFL’s worst, ranking in the bottom five in the NFL in multiple efficiency metrics among the 50 quarterbacks who have thrown 500-plus passes since 2022.
Cleveland has paid him an astounding $9.6 million per start over the length of his deal as it enters its last year in 2026: 19 starts for $183 million in cash earned.
There may never be an NFL contract this depressing for generations to come.
In the limited action over his time in Cleveland thus far, Watson has completed 61.2 percent of his passes for 3,365 yards and 19 touchdowns with 12 interceptions.
As planned by Monken, Watson started and played the first half of Cleveland’s preseason opener against the Chicago Bears on Aug. 15, with Sanders entering the game to start the third quarter. In the second preseason game this Saturday vs. the Buffalo Bills, the rotation order will flip, with Sanders getting the start and Watson coming in to start the second half.
In the preseason opener, Watson went 11-of-15 passing for 126 yards and led Cleveland’s only two scoring drives.
“It was awesome,” Monken said of Watson’s play, via ESPN. “It was so cool to watch him play. I get all of the frustration by fans, himself. But for him to come back and work like he did is an unbelievable credit to him. And then to go out there, he was having fun today. And that is so cool. And I thought he really functioned at a high level. Certainly we don’t want to be taking timeouts. We sure as heck can’t take delay of games, OK? But it was fun watching him play and watching us put the next step forward and see where we’re at.”
It marked Watson’s first live game action since he suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon tear during Cleveland’s Week 7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Oct. 20, 2024. Less than three months after his initial tear, Watson tore his Achilles for the second time and underwent a second surgery in January 2025 to repair it, forcing him to miss the entire 2025 season.
Watson has a 66.2 completion percentage for his NFL career with 17,904 passing yards and 123 passing touchdowns with 48 interceptions in 73 career games with the Texans and Browns since being selected by Houston in the first round (12th overall) of the 2017 NFL Draft.