The clock is ticking, and midnight has nearly arrived for Todd Monken.
The Cleveland quarterback decision is coming soon. Perhaps as soon as Sunday.
“At some point I’m going to have to decide, right?” Monken told reporters after Saturday’s preseason game against the Bills. “I’m saying it kind of jokingly. At some point we’ve got to get that guy the reps, so I’m not going to paint myself into a corner. Optimally, you’d like to give one player all of the reps and you know who the one is, and we’ve done the best we could as a staff trying to work through this. Like at any position.”
Monken made it clear that he plans to watch the film on Sunday and then talk to the coaching staff. A review of the entire picture is necessary to understand why things didn’t go well, on the occasions when they didn’t go well.
“I was looking at things live, and everybody had a hand in it,” Monken said. “I already know, looking at it and watching, we had too many issues with us, that had nothing to do with them. We’re playing some guys who just got with us, but alignment, assignment and communication, Browns hurting Browns, really. You’re not going to have a chance when that happens.”
The final drive, handled by third-stringer Dillon Gabriel, was a particular disaster. In one three-and-out effort, the Browns had three false starts, pushing them all the way to a third-and-25.
“[A]t the end, it was like, really?” Monken said. “That was some shitty football. I don’t care who goes out there. If I could have taken a knee, I probably would have. I mean, what the shit? I don’t know what to tell you.”
The first-year hea coach told the world plenty in his praise of Sanders’s ability to control the game with a strong cadence.
“We work on cadence and operation, and we’re going to continue to do it, because you can’t be leading the offense when you’re not leading the cadence,” Monken said. “In the first half we did, we had a shot. We got them to jump offside, we wanted to take a shot and we jumped, and we had another time we could’ve tapped. We got them in the neutral zone. That’s one thing Shedeur’s going to continue to get better at. We had a chance on third-and-12 to take a shot, he has to see the flag down, we checked it down but didn’t convert on third-and-eight. We were really good at cadence in the first half, but at the end there, it’s not good enough.”
As to Watson, Monken’s comments made it even more clear that, even though signs recently were pointing to the veteran as the starter, the tide has perhaps started to turn — sharply.
“I was disappointed for us collectively that we didn’t play well offensively [under Watson], I’ll just put it that way,” Monken said. “We had to get back on track a bunch. It happened in the first game. When you’re behind the chains, it’s hard. It’s just hard. You can’t force the defense into certain looks [when you] put yourself behind the chains.
“I’ll have to wait to see the tape, but I’m proud of the way he’s worked to get to where he’s at, and that’s part of it. Right? I know you’ve asked him, ‘Hey, how it feels to get booed?’ It’s a pretty easy question, it sucks. I don’t want to get booed. It comes with the territory. You don’t want to get booed? Let’s play good football. Let’s play good at quarterback, on offense and as a team, and then you won’t have to worry about all that, because it can turn just like that. Win, play good football, and everybody will be fine.”
As to the booing Watson, it’s more complicated than playing well. The fans were already wired to boo him, for reasons unrelated to his current level of play. The entire circumstances of his arrival and ongoing presence on the roster point to Browns fans being poised to boo him.
The boos could be heard when Watson took the field in the third quarter, even though the stands seemed to be largely empty. They booed him after the first drive of the second half. The boos were consistent, and unrelated to his play.
Watson said it himself. The boos weren’t about his performance. If he’s the starter in Week 3, he’ll hear it all day long — unless the Browns somehow upset both the Jaguars and Buccaneers on the road to start the season.
There will be plenty of subjectivity and discretion when the time comes to pick a starter between Sanders and Watson. If it’s close for Monken, the fact that the customers have made their position loud and clear will make Sanders the only right answer.
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