How the Browns Have Weathered the Deshaun Watson Storm—For Now

Todd Monken: Browns are gonna Browns. F— that! pic.twitter.com/loDcRzzF9T

— Daniel Oyefusi (@DanielOyefusi) September 20, 2026

The Jacksonville mess only turned up the heat on Watson. And no, one good day won’t turn it down permanently. It could take as little as a couple of interceptions for everything to go back to what we all expected a month ago.

But at least for now, Monken has proof of concept in his program, and what the folks internally and with the teams that played against the Browns this summer—that Watson, while not great, remained Cleveland’s best option at the position—have believed all along, too. So, Watson gets to hold on to the job.

And Monken gets his chance to keep working with a very promising young core and building credibility with a scarred fan base, with the hope that the energy he’s injected into the team spills out going forward the way it did on an imperfect Tampa day.

“It’s not just today, it’s every single day he approaches the day with that energy,” Schwesinger, a linebacker, said. “And it makes it really easy to be excited to go in there during the week and show up on game day ready to play because you know exactly what he wants us to do is exactly how he’s approaching every day. And I think this is just the result of all of us buying in on that and having a lot of fun today.”

It was a lot more fun than the alternative, that’s for sure.

Carolina Panthers

Don’t look now, but Bryce Young has been outstanding. No, the Panthers aren’t 2-0, but Young has played well enough to get them there—and in a high-pressure situation.

Carolina passed on signing the 25-year-old to a contract extension in the first offseason he was eligible for one, and that has typically been a precarious position for any young quarterback. From the 10 draft classes before Young’s (2013 to ’22), 13 first-round quarterbacks got blockbuster second contracts. Ten of them came after three years. Only Daniel Jones and Lamar Jackson played out the fourth year and then got a deal, while Jordan Love did a Band-Aid extension after his third year, and then signed a bigger deal after that.

And yet, so far, so good. Young had passer ratings topping 110 in last week’s 59–37 loss to the Bears and this week’s 34–3 win over the Falcons; through two games, he has connected on 63% of his throws for 648 yards, six touchdowns and one interception.

“It’s no surprise at all because of the games he’s had over the last couple of years, where when he puts the whole game plan together and has that understanding and ownership and the playcaller’s intent, we’ve had amazing performances,” Carolina coach Dave Canales told me postgame. “But it’s the consistency of how it’s showing up now. And then I think the biggest thing to talk about is his ownership of what we’re doing.

“And what I’ve seen from him throughout this [summer] is a lot of conversations on the side with T-Mac [Tetairoa McMillan], with [Jalen] Coker, with Xavier [Legette]. Darren [Waller] shows up, Tommy [Tremble], the tight ends, the backs. It’s just becoming his because I see him fine-tuning what our concepts really are.”

And the challenge that Canales says he has always laid out for his quarterbacks—“Hey, make sure you grab those guys on the side”—is one that Young has taken to heart.

It showed up, Canales added, on both of Waller’s touchdowns on Sunday. Signed in mid-August, Young has been at work with his new tight end, and the two spent time with each other before and after offensive periods at practice last week. Young explained to Waller what leverage the Atlanta defense would deploy, and the two discussed how and when Waller would break it—which Canales said Waller was able to put to use Sunday.

So that, really, is what Young is caught up in now.

As for the contract …

“Bryce has a lot of joy in his face, a lot of joy in the process, in our offense as we continue to grow it and evolve it,” Canales said. “And I see him really just enjoying this moment with his teammates and leading. And he’s done that the entire time, whether he was playing or not. He’s never backed away from standing in front, high-fiving the guys coming into the locker room or coming off the field into the tunnel. He’s right there in the front. He wants them to know, I’m here, we’re all working on this together. And he’s continuing to lead that way.

“I have not seen a change in Bryce.”

Even if, statistically anyway, there seems to be one happening with him.

New Orleans Saints

The Saints deserve your respect. Last week, New Orleans came storming back from a 21–0 deficit in Detroit, forcing overtime before losing, 31–30, on a failed two-point try. This week, head coach Kellen Moore’s crew made good on the promise they showed against the Lions, outlasting the Ravens, 24–17, in Baltimore.

And really, if you want the truth, as Moore himself sees it, this is a continuation of what we saw from the Saints at the end of the 2025 season. Because where most coaches try to turn the page on the previous year and bury the past, Moore’s tact was to embrace it.

At the end of 2025, the Saints went from 2–10 to 6–10, giving themselves a chance to win the NFC South in Week 18. The finale in Atlanta didn’t go as planned, but good vibes remained.

“Last year, trying to carry that through the offseason, I thought was important,” Moore said from the team bus on Sunday. “I thought our guys should feel good about the way last year finished. But every season is different. Every season is going to take its own course. And what I think you’ve seen through the first two weeks is just a really resilient team, and a team that keeps going for it.”

Which is precisely how Moore is showing his faith in the team.

The win in Baltimore, in fact, came on a fourth-and-goal sneak from quarterback Tyler Shough with the game tied at 17 with 1:32 left and a go-ahead field goal there for the taking. Whether or not Shough actually got in from the 1 may still be a question. What wasn’t was the belief the players—and Shough in particular—gave Moore in converting 53.3% of their third downs over the course of the game and a fourth-and-1 earlier in the drive.

Shough’s sneak was followed by Julian Blackmon pick of Lamar Jackson to lock down the win, and it further affirmed where Moore is at with a young core  and a quarterback that seem to be growing by the week.

“Anytime you open a season two games on the road against two teams that I think are going to play a lot of meaningful football down the stretch this year, we look and think about what Detroit’s capable of doing and what Baltimore’s capable of doing, so for us to bring both those games right down the wire, lose one really close and win one, yeah, I think our guys should feel like there’s some good stuff out of that,” Moore says. “But it’s September football and there’s a lot of stuff you’ve got to clean up and get better at.”

And the Saints, under Moore, have already shown they can do that.

San Francisco 49ers

No team has looked better through two weeks than the 49ers, and that’s noteworthy given the summer they just had. Let’s just say that football probably wasn’t the first thing you thought of when San Francisco’s football team came up this summer. Maybe it was the head coach. Maybe it was the owner. Maybe it was the trip they had to take to the other side of the globe. It probably wasn’t that this would be San Francisco’s year.

But maybe it is?

I don’t know if I’d go that far yet, but there’s a lot to like in how a recovered Kyle Shanahan’s crew is playing. Consider: 

• The Niners have outscored the Rams and Dolphins by a combined score of 62–20.

• San Francisco ran roughshod over the Rams, grinding out 174 rushing yards.

• The Dolphins, in turn, were hell-bent on stopping that run game, so the 49ers turned to quarterback Brock Purdy, who connected on 20 of 22 throws for 287 yards and two touchdowns.

• In both games, a veteran defense held the opposition under 300 scrimmage yards.

And after the trip to Australia and all they’ve been through, have the Niners now learned something about themselves?

“I’m not gonna lie, man, when we traded for Osa [Odighizuwa] from the Cowboys and we signed Mike Evans, I was pretty excited about the team back then,” George Kittle told me postgame. “For me, I was just focused on recovering my Achilles to get back to where I could get out there for Week 1. I’ve been just excited about this team since April. I’ve been stoked, and it’s just kind of fun to see, Hey, this is what we thought.

“We thought we were gonna be a really good offense with a really strong defense, especially led by Fred [Warner] and [Nick] Bosa. And that’s what we’ve done. And the crazy thing is we’re moving the ball without two of our starting wide receivers.”

They’ll get one of those guys (De’Zhaun Stribling) back this season, but not the other (Ricky Pearsall).

By the looks of it, the Niners have all they need, especially in a year when so much of the focus was on a couple of other teams in their division.

Cincinnati Bengals

Another week, and more good signs from the Bengals’ defense. Against Tampa in Week 1, Cincinnati’s D was the better of its two units in a 33–27 win (seven of the Buccaneers’ points came on a pick-six). This week? DC Al Golden’s group held C.J. Stroud and company out of the end zone in a 20–6 win over the Texans.

Two games don’t make a season. But on a day when Joe Burrow called his own performance “incredibly average,” the defense again made the team look increasingly less one-dimensional than it has been the past couple of years.

“That’s why they invested so much into the defensive side of the ball, knowing the offense is doing their part,” second-year linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr. told me. “We just gotta continue to do our part. There’s still some meat that we left on the bone today, so we’re obviously gonna be critical of ourselves on that. We’re gonna continue to keep raising to the level of our offense and making sure we get them more touches than the opposing offenses.”

Last week, the key was turnovers. This week, the difference was fourth down. Houston went for it four times and came up empty each time, with three of those four stops happening inside the red zone. And that’s the thing about it—the Bengals’ infusion of accomplished veterans such as Dexter Lawrence II, Bryan Cook and Boye Mafe is paying off in critical spots.

And Knight said it’s reflected in how those guys have addressed the team from the very start.

“Dexter’s the last person to get up and introduce himself. We all obviously know who he is, but for him to get up there and say, I’m here because I wanna win a championship, that speaks volumes,” Knight said. “He’s here to stand up on that stage at the end of the year, in February, back in L.A., where it first went down, but this time they have a different result.”

The Bengals came close in L.A. in Super Bowl LVI. And that Knight, who was still three years away from being drafted by the team, would so casually bring that up gives you a good idea about how these guys are talking.

Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings, too, stood out defensively. We gave Brian Flores his due praise last week in this spot, and the Minnesota DC put more of his wizardry on display at Soldier Field on Sunday, with his players holding an offense that scored 59 points last week to just three on a rainy Chicago day.

As such, the much-anticipated Ben Johnson–Brian Flores showdown went to Flores, and the game itself went to the Vikings, 9–3.

And, yes, Caleb Williams got hurt (more on that in a minute). Still, he was hardly himself before that—throwing for 138 yards and an interception on 15-of-26 passing—and Chicago couldn’t crack 300 yards after exceeding 250 both on the ground and through the air in Carolina in Week 1. Along the way, the Vikings got a fourth-down goal-line stop in the third quarter and two more red-zone stops on Chicago’s last two offensive possessions, one led by Williams and the other by backup Tyson Bagent (a Dallas Turner sack ended that one).

That marks the second consecutive week the veteran defense, stocked full of experienced, heady vets capable of handling the volume of information Flores trusts with them, closed like a thoroughbred.

“It’s for sure an advantage,” veteran corner Byron Murphy Jr. told me. “You got Gink [Andrew Van Ginkel], you got Harry [Harrison Smith], you got guys that just have a whole bunch of experience. And then you have smart guys. When you have smart guys, experienced guys on the field at the same time, man, that’s really hard to beat, because we can run so many different things in our defense, and the next guy you see, at whatever position, it might be with a different role for him.”

For now, it has been enough to settle the choppy waters on offense with starting quarterback Kyler Murray sidelined due to a concussion.

Carson Wentz threw for just 143 yards on Sunday, but that wound up being enough.

Quarterback injuries

The Williams and Jayden Daniels injuries aren’t ideal, but they may not be as bad as they looked. Daniels’s injury, which happened in Dallas, was gruesome in how his left elbow bent back. But it’s similar to the one that he had last year. And while Williams’s injury was the noncontact variety (always scary) and is a hamstring (those can be tricky) and he did leave the field on a cart, the Bears are optimistic they’ll have him back soon.

Obviously, the more all of us get of those two, the better. So we should be rooting for good outcomes and speedy returns.

But it did make me think about the big-picture decisions those franchises have to make on those quarterbacks next year, with both eligible for new contracts and the new-money average per year on those deals likely approaching $70 million. Any extended absence for either will cut into the information teams have to make a decision. Also, in both cases, that adds to their injury histories.

Don’t get me wrong: I do think both guys will get paid.

But ideally, if you’re the Bears or the Commanders, you’d like to have a guy coming off a full, healthy, productive season before you do an extension.

Denver Broncos

The Broncos may have saved their season on Sunday. If Denver doesn’t pull itself from a 13–3 deficit against the Jaguars on Sunday, then Sean Payton’s crew is 0–2, with this four-game stretch staring it in the face: Rams, at Niners, at Chargers, Seahawks.

And the best part for the Broncos is that OC Davis Webb and QB Bo Nix were part of the solution.

Denver scored on its first three possessions of the second half, then bled the final 4:41 off the clock to secure a 20–13 win over a really good Jacksonville team to bounce back from a tough Monday night opener at Arrowhead Stadium.

“Honestly, I just think we regrouped, started believing in the plays that D-Webb was calling and everyone just bought in,” new Bronco Jaylen Waddle said to me. He then added this about Nix, “He’s just a dog, man. He’s a god. He’s not afraid of the moment.”

Fair to say, in a really tough spot Sunday, the whole team rose to it. But given the criticism each took last week, Webb and Nix doing so might’ve meant a little more.

Los Angeles Chargers

On the flip side, it might be time to worry about the Chargers. They’ve now lost to the Cardinals and Raiders. Their next four games are at the Bills, at Seattle, vs. the Broncos and at the Chiefs. Then they have their bye and play the Rams, Texans and Ravens after that.

I have faith in offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel. Still, his run game has had trouble getting untracked against Arizona and Vegas, and QB Justin Herbert has thrown three picks in those two games. That the offense has scored only 14 points in each of them is troubling to say the least. I’ve loved the idea of McDaniel marrying his offense to Jim Harbaugh’s rugged program, both being philosophically rooted on the ground.

But it’s worth noting McDaniel’s scheme is foundationally different than what Harbaugh is used to. So all of this might take a little more time.

Or at least the Chargers have to be hoping that’s the case.

Quick-hitters

Let’s wrap up Week 2 with a few quick-hitters …

• I know it was Thursday, but Bills QB Josh Allen played like a superhero for much of that game against the Lions.

• The Packers are another team that pulled its season from the fire with a dramatic comeback win over the Jets. More good news: Lukas Van Ness had a sack and a half. Green Bay still has two games, at least, until Micah Parsons is back. So getting this breakthrough from a former first-round pick is a godsend.

• The Patriots’ defense has been better than expected through two weeks, which has helped the team navigate a bumpy start from Drake Maye. Second-round linebacker Gabe Jacas, who missed much of the offseason in a contract dispute, has been a big part of it.

• While we’re there, Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers is having a tough time getting himself out of harm’s way.

• DeVonta Smith seems to be settling in as a real No. 1 receiver in Philly, making a slew of big catches in a win in Nashville that was way harder than it needed to be.

• Dak Prescott played like a league MVP against the Commanders. No real run game, but it didn’t matter.

• The Cardinals actually hung in there for a while with the Super Bowl champs. That said, the Seahawks’ commitment to working with backup quarterbacks continues to pay off, this time with Drew Lock being so ready in Sam Darnold’s absence. He was efficient, in command and the triggerman for another big Jaxon Smith-Njigba day.

• The Chiefs got 382 passing yards from Patrick Mahomes, 117 rushing yards from Kenneth Walker Jr. and are now tied with the Raiders (!) atop the AFC West.

• Yikes, Atlanta.

• Can’t wait to watch Aaron Donald tonight. I hope everyone can take a minute to appreciate what he’s trying to pull off.

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