Deshaun Watson suspension adjusted- Finally an agreement!

    DeShaun Watson won't be throwing footballs for the Cleveland Browns until December 4th but working out an agreement for an eleven-game suspension and a five million dollar fine allows Watson to avoid risking losing the NFL's appeal of his original six-game suspension and sitting out the entire 2022 season.

While the media frenzy with Watson will continue likely for a year or more, the one positive of a menu filled with negatives with the entire saga is that for good or bad, the Cleveland Browns now know how long they will be without the player that they paid a ransom for and just how long that the Browns will have to get by with Jacoby Brissett in a season that they expected to contend.

I wrote about this after the six-game suspension, so I'm going to try to stick to the football aspect of this decision and the Browns will almost have to get off to a quick start with Brissett.

Cleveland's first four games are all winnable, with road games in Carolina and Atlanta with home games against the Jets and Pittsburgh, but the Browns will also go through the final seven games during Brissett's tenure that will see home games against the Chargers, New England, Cincinnati, and Tampa Bay with road games against Baltimore, Buffalo, and Miami.

Only Miami would seem to be a game that the Browns would be a strong favorite of that group right now and who knows what will be in store by the time any of those games roll around.

All of those games considered, I'd say the Browns have to be 6-5 or better when Watson returns to the lineup, and the only way that I see that happening is that the Browns win at least three of the four games at the head of the schedule.

I would think that the Browns will be looking for a veteran quarterback that could step in, should Brissett underperform or would be injured, and while I doubt the Browns would write a big check for Jimmy Garrappolo, Cleveland will have to have someone with some experience because if this season comes down to Josh Dobbs as the replacement as the starting quarterback, the season has officially become a disaster.

I'm not saying that a savior or anyone even better than Brissett would be available other than Garroppolo but they have to have enough experience to stem the tide and be better than Dobbs or Josh Rosen, who are both third-stringers/training camp arms essentially.

Who that quarterback could be is open to interpretation but even a veteran (Non-Garroppolo division) isn't likely to be too much of an improvement over Jacoby Brissett, although many could be better than Josh Dobbs.

A bigger question could be what DeShaun Watson is capable of doing on his Week 13 return in Houston (if you think that wasn't somewhat planned, I have a bridge to sell you).

After all, when Watson takes the field that day, he will have missed well over a year and a half and the only game action that he has seen since the 2020 season will have been the three drives that he led last week in the Browns preseason game in Jacksonville.

While I'm not worried about that being an issue over the long term, I do have questions about how long it could take to have Watson return to speed, especially with only six games remaining and the Browns possibly in a situation of playoff panic when Watson returns.

It could take time to return to peak performance and judging from the crowd that greeted him in Jacksonville, it could take some getting used to the amount of abuse and catcalls that will follow Watson wherever he goes for quite a while, if not for the rest of his career.

The Cleveland Browns now know how long they will play without DeShaun Watson.

The question now becomes can they stay close enough to the pack to avoid another lost season?

Browns Sign Brissett, Trade Keenum

  The maneuvering for the Cleveland Browns at quarterback continued on Saturday as the team sent Case Keenum to Buffalo and signed Jacoby Brissett to serve as the main backup to DeShaun Watson.

The thirty-four-year-old Keenum was signed to a three-year contract in 2020 to backup Baker Mayfield and would win both of his starts (three touchdown passes and one interception) in relief of Mayfield in 2021 but was owed a one million roster bonus on the third day of the start of the league season and the Browns didn't see Keenum as a good fit as the backup to the newly acquired DeShaun Watson at a pricey 6.1 million additional dollars under the cap.

Keenum was being paid a lot of money to be able to step in should Baker Mayfield be injured and yet Mayfield was injured for much of the season, head coach Kevin Stefanski didn't seem to have the needed confidence in Keenum to sit the battered Mayfield.

It says a lot when you pay millions for a backup for an emergency situation and when that time arrives, you don't feel good enough about that player to put him in the lineup.

It's always a good idea to have your backup quarterback resemble your starter's skills or style because it doesn't force a complete revamp of what you like to do to accommodate the second-stringer when he needs to play.

The Browns addressed that with the addition of Jacoby Brissett to a one-year contract for an undisclosed amount.

The 29-year-old Brissett played in eleven games last season with the Dolphins, making five starts off the bench and finishing 2-3 in those starts, throwing five touchdowns and four interceptions.

2021 was Brissett's first season with Miami after four years with the Colts, who traded for him in 2017 after Brissett's rookie season with New England, who drafted him in the third round from N.C. State in 2016.

The mobile 6'4 Brissett is similar to DeShaun Watson in many of the things that he likes to do and while I was hoping for Marcos Mariota, who is even more similar in style to Watson, it could have been that Mariota had wanted more money than the Browns wanted to pay or even that Mariota could have preferred to sign with a team where he might have an opportunity to start which could be the same teams that could be interested in a trade for Baker Mayfield. who remains on the roster for now.

Jacoby Brissett should be a good fit for the Browns as a backup and the questions now are where does Baker Mayfield go, what do the Browns receive in return, and who could be the Browns' third-string arm, which is more interesting than usual as that player would be only one hit away from playing during a potential Watson suspension.