The Cleveland Browns quarterback competition is the most talked about storyline in the entire organization right now, and one analyst is done pretending there is any real debate about what this fan base actually wants to see.
Ken Carman did not hold anything back.
“We don’t want to see Deshaun Watson be the starter. We’re ready to move on. I got young players. Let’s move forward. Stop living in the past, man. If moving forward means Shedeur Sanders plays and sucks, and then we move on to somebody else just to finish off the season, and we go to 2027, then so be it. All Deshaun does is remind me of the bad plays and the opportunities that we missed. What good of it are we gonna get?” Carman said.
"We don't want to see Deshaun Watson be the starter. We're ready to move on. I got young players… All Deshaun does is remind me of the bad plays and the opportunities that we missed."
🏈@KenCarman on why starting Deshaun Watson doesn't make sense for the Browns pic.twitter.com/I4Qex9fObB
— 92.3 The Fan (@923TheFan) June 10, 2026
The frustration behind those words is legitimate and deeply rooted in what Cleveland has been through since the organization traded away a mountain of draft capital to acquire Watson before he had even played a single snap for this team.
Watson’s tenure in Cleveland has been defined almost entirely by what it was supposed to be rather than what it actually became. The Browns surrendered three first round picks, a third round pick, and multiple other assets to the Houston Texans in one of the most aggressive quarterback acquisitions in NFL history. The expectation was a franchise altering talent who would immediately elevate this team into contention. What followed was a suspension, injuries, inconsistency, and ultimately two torn Achilles tendons that have left serious questions about whether Watson can ever return to the player he once was.
The math of that situation is something Cleveland fans are reminded of every single time Watson takes a snap. Those picks represented an entire generation of potential roster building that never happened. Players who were never drafted, depth that was never added, future stars who ended up in other cities because the Browns had traded away the selections that would have brought them to Cleveland.
The competition is still ongoing and Todd Monken has made clear he is not ready to make a decision yet. But the sentiment Carman is expressing reflects where a significant portion of this fan base has already landed, and it is hard to argue with the logic behind it.
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