Deshaun Watson Has Done the Impossible: Unite Browns Fans

CLEVELAND — Anthony Lima knows better than most that consensus among Browns fans is rare. 

A longtime radio host and media personality in his native Northeast Ohio, the cohost of The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima has spent the last 15 years starting and fighting in arguments focused on a litany of Cleveland football figures. 

Typically, these debates follow the same format. A portion of the fanbase champions the player/coach/executive du jour, while the other side is ready to move on. The exercise is tailor made for a quarterback-starved city like Cleveland: Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer, DeShone Kizer, and Baker Mayfield have all received such treatment during Lima’s time at 92.3 The Fan. Even Johnny Manziel had his share of supporters.

The reaction to Monday’s announcement that the Browns have named Deshaun Watson as their starting quarterback less than 48 hours after he publicly clashed with fans who booed him during the team’s preseason loss to the Bills, however, has been different. For once, Cleveland fans appear to be aligned: They don’t want Watson as their starting quarterback.

“I can’t remember anything like this,” Lima told Front Office Sports on Monday morning. “Like, yeah, fans were against Dwayne Bowe and Kenny Britt towards the end, but that’s normal stuff. Every NFL team has a villain that they can’t believe they’re paying. But this is insanity.

“I said today, they were like Toledo—they were a test market for all the crazy stuff that could possibly happen in the NFL. And I did not think when I got up on Saturday morning, we were gonna have another shining example of things that have gone wrong for the Cleveland Browns organization.”

Lima’s sentiments were echoed on social media throughout Monday, as several NFL media personalities weighed in with their own negative reactions to the Browns’ announcement. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky called for a boycott of the team. Mina Kimes noted the moral dilemma the franchise has placed its fanbase in for the last half-decade. Kyle Brandt tried to make sense of Browns owner Jimmy Haslam calling the trade for Watson a “big swing-and-miss” 17 months before he was once again named the team’s starting quarterback.

“Browns fans I don’t know how you do it,” Brandt posted. Brandt’s statement appeared to be rhetorical. But if he’s looking for an answer, it appears to be “with a lot of frustration.”

‘It takes a lot to have the entire Browns fandom against you’

Outside Huntington Bank Field on Tuesday morning somebody taped multiple signs to a statue of Jim Brown denouncing Watson.  The act of amateur vandalism may have been carried out by just one person. But it also fit right in alongside the overwhelming reaction on social media, as well as several fans FOS spoke with on Monday.

Chris McNeil, who runs the popular REFLOG18 social media account, told FOS that it was the angriest Browns fans had been since Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore in 1996.

“It’s back to the ‘Jump Art’ days, where people are now galvanized against Deshaun Watson,” McNeil said. “It takes a lot to have the entire Browns fandom against you. But Deshaun Watson’s played himself into that unique position.”

This isn’t the first time that Browns fans have clashed with their favorite team, especially since Haslam bought the team in 2012. 

In January 2018, McNeil famously organized a parody “Perfect Season Parade” that was attended by a few thousand fans, making good on his promise to do so if the team ever went winless for a whole season, as it managed to do in 2017. 

This being the Browns, even their losing was the subject of explosive allegations. Hue Jackson, who went 1–31 as Browns coach over 2016 and 2017, alleged in 2022 that Haslam offered him millions of dollars in bonuses in order to lose games and improve the team’s draft position. Haslam called Jackson’s account an “absolute falsehood.”

Browns Baggage

By this point, Cleveland fans’ frustration with losing seasons, missed draft picks, and a revolving door of head coaches has been well documented. But there’s something about the entire Watson situation that seems nastier than usual.

“I’ve put up with bad football before this, but it never felt malicious. It just felt like they were too dumb to get out of their own way,” Ethan Moses, whose family recently canceled their four-pack of season tickets, told FOS. “This feels like they don’t give a shit about any of the fans.”

A big part of that appears to be tied to the circumstances in which the Browns first acquired Watson, who was facing more than 20 civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct when Cleveland traded three first-round picks to the Texans and gave him a fully guaranteed $230 million contract in March 2022. The nature of the allegations against Watson—who has since settled more than two dozen lawsuits and started his Browns career by serving an 11-game suspension and paying a $5 million fine—led some fans to denounce their fandom and left many others with mixed feelings.

“That trade for Deshaun really bugged me and mostly, there were people who had season tickets alongside us and our family who dropped their season tickets over it because everybody was very concerned about the off the field issues,” McNeil said. “That was really the first time in my Browns fandom that I had that in my circle and certainly I had my own reservations about it too.”

Watson, however, still had his share of supporters at the start of his Cleveland tenure.

“It started out rough because he never showed remorse, and there were still people who were like, ‘I don’t really care. Football players do bad things,’” Lima recalled of the fan reaction at the time. “We have to watch Ben Roethlisberger and Ray Lewis in our division for years,” he said. (Roethlisberger was suspended for six games after a sexual assault allegation, while Lewis pleaded guilty to obstructing justice after initially being charged with murder after a stabbing at the Super Bowl in 2000.) “So finally, it’s our turn to have the good player that has some baggage, and I think some people were like relishing the villain.”

Ultimately, any concerns about the conflicted feelings that might have accompanied a successful Watson era in Cleveland proved moot. After returning from the suspension in 2022, he hardly looked like the same player who made three consecutive Pro Bowls with the Texans from 2018 to 2020. That trend continued into the 2023 and 2024 seasons, both of which were cut short by injuries—the latter being an Achilles tear that many Browns fans cheered as they assumed Watson’s time in Cleveland had finally come to an end.

“When he sucked and never looked anything remotely like the guy that was a top-five quarterback in the league, I think that it was easy,” Lima said. “It’s just, everybody gang up on him and the quicker we gang up on him, he’ll never be here. He’ll never play here again.”

And yet, Watson still entered Saturday’s preseason exhibition vs. Buffalo as the apparent frontrunner in a prolonged quarterback competition against Shedeur Sanders. When he took the field for the start of the third quarter, the fan reaction remained the same, as the former Clemson star was greeted by a smattering of boos in what marked his first game action in Cleveland since the October 2024 Achilles tear.

The boos only increased as Watson’s poor play—5-for-12, 36 yards, 1 interception—continued. Following the game, the 30-year-old only widened the gap between himself and his team’s fanbase when he accused the boos of being “personal” while referencing the home crowd’s reaction to his Achilles tear two years ago.

“I think the whole world knows it has nothing to do about the performance,” Watson told reporters during his postgame press conference. “It’s a little bit [more] personal than that. So I think that’s a disrespectful thing.”

Leaving Saturday, many—including betting odds and prediction markets—figured that the public spat between Watson and the fans would be too much to overcome as Todd Monken prepared to name his starter. But during a media availability session on Sunday, the first-year head coach insisted that the postgame press conference wouldn’t factor into his decision, and on Monday, he officially named Watson his starting quarterback despite the fan reaction.

“Absolutely not. Zero. There was nothing to do with that,” Monken answered on Monday when asked whether he considered the fanbase’s feelings when naming his starter. “Ultimately, the fans want us to win. Ultimately, to put a good product on the field. That’s really what they want. And that’s our job as coaches, why we’re hired—to try to put the best product on the field. And when we don’t, then I understand their frustration. But ultimately, they don’t decide who plays. I mean, who would I be if I let someone outside of the building decide who plays?”

A Storybook Ending?

Still, the entire situation has set up a unique scenario where the vast majority of Browns fans already find themselves at odds with their team before the first game of the season has been played. An unusual quirk in the schedule has the Browns playing two road games in Florida before their Week 3 home opener, and despite the years of losing, the fanbase continues to travel relatively well.

“There will be Browns fans in Jacksonville, and there will be Browns fans in Tampa Bay. Are they really gonna be rooting against the Browns?” Lima said. “That normally only happens when you’ve reached that part of the season in the sports cycle where you’re thinking about the draft. Never in the NFL are fans rooting against their team in Week 1. So, this is like new territory for even the Browns.”

It’s possible that Watson could play well enough to reverse the fan reaction ahead of the team’s home opener on Sept. 27. It’s perhaps more feasible that Shedeur Sanders could be the Browns’ starting quarterback by then.

Only adding to the intrigue: Cleveland’s Week 2 opponent is the Buccaneers, whose quarterback, Baker Mayfield, is the one the Browns jettisoned to make room for Watson in 2022.  That’s given some fans hope that the Watson era could still include a storybook ending—the kind that could only happen in Cleveland.

“We need Baker to ride in on a white horse and save us by beating the crap out of us in Game 2,” McNeil said.  

“That would be the script, right? Deshaun doesn’t look good Week 1, Week 2, everybody finally in the organization says, ‘OK, now we tried again. It failed again, now it’s finally time to move on. We can’t bring this version of Deshaun Watson back to the stadium, risk him getting booed, risk an ugly situation for us, for our fans, being just laughed at nationally for everything we do.”

The Browns didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the fan response to Watson for this story.