Deshaun Watson tore his Achilles last month, ending his season and potentially his tenure with the Browns.
But in his bye week press conference on Wednesday, General Manager Andrew Berry said there’s a world where Watson can come back and play for Cleveland again.
“Yeah, I think that’s always possible,” Berry said.
Since he was acquired from the Texans in the 2022 offseason, Watson has played just 19 games, completing 61.2 percent of his throws for 3,365 yards with 19 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. By most metrics, he was one of the league’s worst starting quarterbacks this season, completing 63.4 percent of his throws for 1,148 yards with five touchdowns and three picks. Though he hasn’t played in two weeks, he still leads the lead with having taken 33 sacks.
“I would say more broadly, we haven’t played well as a team and we haven’t played well as a unit on offense,” Berry said. “And I think oftentimes when you don’t play well on offense, obviously your starting quarterback and your play-caller will get the most criticism. But the reality of it is, offense comes down to organization and synchronization. There’s just a lot of shared ownership across the different position groups in terms of why we didn’t perform.”
At this point, it’s clear that the Watson trade was a major misstep for the Browns as an organization. But Berry said multiple times he wasn’t in “reflection mode” at this point in the year, including when he was asked if he still thinks the trade was a good one.
“[I]t’s really more not really my focus at this point in the year,” Berry said. “Our focus is really on finishing out the 2024 season, having the team play at a higher level, and we’ll get to maybe those longer-term, or big-picture reflections at a later point in time.”
And as for whose decision it was to bring in Watson in the first place, Berry once again pointed to the collective.
“I’d say this, like we’ve always said, all of us were on board,” Berry said. “Everyone’s on board and, obviously, with a big commitment in that regard, that’s always going to be the case.”
