Cleveland Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam have accepted the reality of the trade for Deshaun Watson as a franchise-altering mistake.
The Browns took a huge and controversial bet on Watson, trading three-first round picks, a third-round pick and two fourth-round picks to the Houston Texans to acquire Watson, who they then gave a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal.
They did so despite him being accused of sexual misconduct by over 20 women, with Watson suspended by the NFL for the first 11 games of his maiden season with the Browns in 2022.
Having sat out the entire 2021 season for the Texans following the emergence of the allegations against him, Watson was very rusty in the six appearances he made for the Browns in his debut season.
Watson played in just 13 games across the 2023 and 2024 seasons, with both of those campaigns ended by injury. He had surgery on a broken bone in his shoulder after the Browns’ Week 10 win over the Baltimore Ravens in 2023, and then saw his dismal 2024 brought to an end by a torn Achilles in Week 7.
The Browns went 1-6 with Watson under center in 2024, ranking last in the league with 253.9 yards per game on offense.
When healthy, Watson has never looked close to being the kind of All-Pro talent he was during his best days with the Texans, and the Haslams conceded they made a huge error in signing off on the trade.
“We took a big swing and miss with Deshaun,” Jimmy Haslam said at the NFL’s annual league meetings on Monday.
“We thought we had the quarterback, we didn’t and we gave up a lot of draft picks to get him. So we’ve got to dig ourselves out of that hole.
“[The trade] was an entire organization decision and it ends with Dee and I, so hold us accountable.”
Kenny Pickett is the only other quarterback on the roster having been acquired in a recent trade with the Philadelphia Eagles.
As such, the Browns digging themselves out of a hole will likely involve taking a quarterback with the second overall pick in the 2025 draft next month, with Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders the consensus top two at the position.
It’s not clear what the Browns will do with Watson from this point. What Haslam has made obvious, however, is that the Browns are done trying to make the Watson trade a success, and they will soon be putting that massive blunder behind them.
