00:00We got a game to talk about today, a game that I don't know how much anticipation there was.
00:06I think depending on basically just how you approach Browns games,
00:10that determined your level of excitement for it.
00:12I just had maybe a sense of morbid curiosity,
00:16and there was a little bit of a relief when they finally kicked off this afternoon
00:21that finally we can get down to the nitty-gritty of it and have actual games to debate about.
00:28We have been screaming at each other about Shador versus Deshaun
00:32and whether or not Todd Munkin has a good feel of things,
00:34who controls who starts at quarterback week one, whether it's Jimmy Haslam,
00:39whether it is actually Todd Munkin and the coaching staff,
00:42that I think everybody was just tired of it.
00:44And at the very least, whether you thought like some host on the station
00:49that it was going to be a seven or eight win season,
00:51or like others and myself included that this is closer to a four or five win team,
00:56you just wanted to see things happen.
01:00And all of that excitement went out of the window five plays in.
01:04On one of the worst interceptions that I have ever seen from Deshaun Watson,
01:09from any quarterback, a read that from all available angles on the broadcast
01:13looked like a high school JV starting quarterback could make,
01:18that you don't throw that ball, which we were talking in the back a little bit.
01:21It was hilarious because of all the passes that Watson threw today,
01:25that first interception had probably the most conviction on it.
01:30Like it looked like he was the most confident to throw that pass out of anything else
01:34this afternoon in Jacksonville.
01:36And it was the one that went directly into the hands of a defender.
01:38It was just absolutely ridiculous.
01:40And that set sail on what was just an embarrassing, putrid, pathetic afternoon of football.
01:47I got mad initially after the interception.
01:51And from there, I was emotionally checked out.
01:55I really was.
01:56Typically, I'm a very physical sort of Browns fan watcher.
02:02Like I'm walking around, you know, juggling a water bottle,
02:06like doing a whole bunch of different things because there's a lot of nervous energy with me.
02:11And I was just on my couch, scrolling Twitter, putting my notes together for the show tonight
02:16because I knew from that interception that this wasn't going to go well.
02:21Now, I didn't think that it was going to go as poorly as it ended up going.
02:25Again, this is still week one.
02:27Crazy things happen.
02:28Like I don't blame people like Ken Carman for believing that they were going to win this game today
02:33because all across the NFL today, we've seen some crazy games.
02:38I mean, hell, the Saints almost beat the Lions, save for a two-point conversion that didn't go through.
02:43We saw how sloppy the Wednesday and Thursday night football games were.
02:47So I was heading into this game thinking, hey, what the hell?
02:50Maybe even though there's the worst quarterback in football starting for you,
02:55a bunch of rookies all across the board in very key positions, including two on your offensive line,
03:00maybe Jacksonville is also struggling to get things going a little bit.
03:05Their starters didn't play either in the preseason.
03:08Ours did.
03:08At the very least, we had that leg up on them.
03:11And no, it was the same fears that you have been putting off in the back of your head
03:17that were realized on play number five of the game
03:21and then throughout the entirety of this afternoon.
03:24And what ensued, what resulted is just an absolutely hapless performance.
03:29I want to take away some good from every single game, especially on a team like this
03:36where we don't believe that they're going to be all that good
03:38and they're probably going to end up closer to the number one overall pick than a playoff spot.
03:44You want to see the rookies progress a little bit more.
03:46You want to see the defense come together.
03:49You want to see some form of growth week in and week out.
03:53And because your quarterback play was so bad, was so hapless, was so ridiculously inept,
04:01I couldn't properly look at Denzel Boston until the very last drive of the game.
04:07I couldn't see Casey Concepcion and Harold Fannin because they didn't target Harold Fannin until the third quarter.
04:13I couldn't see Quinshot Judkins because I knew that going in,
04:17they assumed that it was going to be a difficult game to get the run game going.
04:22But at the very least, if you know your quarterback's not that good, you got to get that going.
04:26I can't watch Quinshot Judkins that much because they're stacking the box because they know Deshaun Watson,
04:31all he can do is throw the ball about five yards.
04:34And if he happens to throw a pass five yards, it's going to get picked off or it's going to
04:37go any number of different places.
04:39I would love to know, and we're going to hear from postgame from Deshaun himself and from Todd Munkin and
04:46some other people.
04:48If Todd Munkin opens up the film from today's game, tomorrow or whenever it is that they start things off,
04:56if he watches that, can he seriously believe in his heart of hearts that Deshaun Watson gives him the best
05:05chance
05:05to win football games in week two, in week 10, in whatever week.
05:10And I know it's a week-to-week thing, so you got to look just at the Tampa Bay game
05:13next week.
05:14But I do not think that this dude, that any of those coaches, can look at the performance that Deshaun
05:21Watson put out today
05:22and say that that is a good enough performance.
05:26And it wasn't just Deshaun Watson.
05:28There were problems up and down the roster, up and down the entire program.
05:32Like, everything just went so bad throughout the entire game.
05:37All of the heat, of course, is going to go on Deshaun Watson because he's your quarterback.
05:41Obviously, we have the preconceived notions of him and what's happened since he's gotten here in 2022.
05:47We'll get into all the other things that went wrong, but the focus and the fact of the matter
05:52and the thing that we're all trying to figure out long-term and even for this year
05:56is do you have any modicum of hope at the quarterback spot?
06:01And I guess today was just confirmation of all of the anger, all of the angst that we had had
06:08leading up to this thing
06:09because we knew what Deshaun Watson was like right now.
06:13And I'm going to get into where Shador plays into this thing and that whole thing,
06:18but you got to trust this coaching staff enough to believe that they're in the building day in and day
06:23out with these guys,
06:23so they must feel and they see that Deshaun Watson is a better quarterback at this point in time than
06:30Shador Sanders.
06:31But I promise you that they didn't think that he would magically become Deshaun Watson from eight years ago.
06:38They had to have known because what we saw of him in training camp,
06:42what we saw of him in the sparse preseason games that we saw,
06:46and again, the last time out we saw him was in that Bills game and, you know,
06:50the booing took over the narrative of that game, but the play on the field was god-awful to begin
06:54with.
06:54They had to have known that this guy was nowhere close to being competent.
07:00All across the league today, you are seeing quarterbacks that I don't think any of us believe are all that
07:05good,
07:06but they're helping their team not lose games and they're helping play towards the strengths of their teams.
07:12I mean, hell, Kyler Murray got bounced out in the first quarter.
07:17Carson Wentz is keeping the Vikings up and running.
07:19Now, that's a veteran.
07:20He started games.
07:21He was the top pick years and years ago.
07:24But, I mean, there's guys that, Geno Smith is another guy that helped the Jets win a game today
07:28in pretty dominating fashion.
07:31Deshaun Watson is nowhere close to that,
07:34and that is not, those aren't good quarterback situations across the league.
07:38Yet, somehow, some way, they decided that Deshaun Watson was the best chance.
07:44And, again, we've talked ad nauseum about how many times they could have addressed the quarterback spot this offseason alone.
07:52And it didn't just need to be you draft Ty Simpson or trade up to go get Fernando Mendoza.
07:58There were clear options, stopgap options for a team that is not really gearing up to win this season,
08:05and they know that their quarterback of the future is either playing in college or in high school right now.
08:09Hopefully, it's college so that we can just get this thing over with.
08:13You had short-term stopgap options, and you didn't do that.
08:17So, you get yourself into a situation like today where a washed-out guy that has lost as many steps
08:25as you can possibly lose as a quarterback,
08:28that's your starting quarterback option, at least for right now.
08:32And I at least give Todd Munkin some credit for in the postgame when asked about who the starting quarterback
08:37is going to be,
08:38not immediately saying, you know, putting his foot in the sand and saying,
08:42Deshaun Watson will be our week two starting quarterback.
08:46And I don't even think that's a little bit of lip service to us because that makes us as fans
08:50feel a little bit better out of this situation.
08:53But I think the fact of the matter is, when you have a game as poorly constructed as that game
08:58was today,
08:59you do have to look at every single thing top to bottom.
09:03Todd Munkin didn't close the door on it completely,
09:06but he opened it up enough for us to hopefully believe that maybe they'll come to their senses some way,
09:13somehow, and move on with this thing.
09:17This is a failed experiment, but we knew that already.
09:20This is something that went wrong, but we knew that already.
09:23That was two years ago when he tore his Achilles and got carted off the field that we knew that
09:30this thing was all over and done with.
09:32And now we're just playing out the string.
09:34I don't know why.
09:35I don't know if there's some form of trying to prove that you're right,
09:39trying to squeeze whatever blood you can out of a rock.
09:44And it's not working, but it hasn't worked.
09:48So yeah, today I was excited going into the game.
09:51I was excited for the first couple of plays, for the first four plays.
09:55But then I sat back and removed emotion from it completely.
09:59It was simply like I was watching a preseason game, that none of this matters.
10:03All things that could go wrong will go wrong.
10:06And at the end of the day, I'm going to come in here and talk about it with you guys.
10:11That's how my afternoon went.
10:12And that's not how your afternoon should go in week one of the NFL season,
10:17when optimism is supposed to be as high as humanly possible.
10:21One day, two days ago, people were on these airwaves saying that this is closer to a 7-8 win
10:28team.
10:29And maybe some of that is they truly believe that this team is better than a 4-5 win team.
10:34And I hope that in our heart of hearts, we believe that this team is better than the performance that
10:39they put out today.
10:41But I have to imagine that some of it is early season optimism.
10:44And that's okay to be optimistic as a Browns fan.
10:47It's okay to look at the brighter side of things for once as a fan.
10:51All of that dissipated five plays into the season, and every single time that Deshaun Watson took a snap, it
10:59just went further and further and further away.
11:02And now, at the end of week one, you are signing yourself up for a season that you don't need
11:08to be that emotionally involved in.
11:10At least as long as Deshaun Watson is the starting quarterback, why am I, as a Browns fan, going to
11:16pace around my apartment?
11:17Why am I, as a Browns fan, going to yell and scream and throw things and wake up my neighbors
11:23over the performance that's on the field?
11:27Something seismic needs to change when you put out a performance like that.
11:31And I don't believe that it's week one overreaction, and of course it's 17 games, so you only have 17
11:38opportunities to react, so your reactions are going to be emotional and they're going to be all over the place.
11:43I get that.
11:45But this was not just a quarterback having a bad game.
11:49This was confirmation that a failed experiment has continued to fail and it's not going to get any better.
11:55You are not going to come anywhere close to pulling the nose up on this thing.
11:59And today, confirm that.
12:01I am beside myself with anger at the idea that they would even roll Deshaun Watson back out there.
12:10But again, I have to throw my hands up, remove my emotions from it, because what has anybody on this
12:17coaching staff, what has anybody in this organization given me as evidence to believe that they aren't going to move
12:24off of Deshaun Watson this week?
12:25I don't believe that they would go through all of this, the booing from the fans, the Deshaun Watson press
12:32conference and then half-assed apology two days afterwards, the rigmarole of going through a two-quarterback battle and not
12:41deciding until a week and a half before the start of the season, all for them to have one bad
12:48game from Deshaun and then immediately go to the other guy.
12:50I don't believe that that's going to happen, and frankly, if that is what was in place at all in
12:56their minds, then they should have just gone with the young guy anyways.
13:00Questions that we have had in the recesses of our mind all offseason that we didn't want to properly address
13:07all came to a head today.
13:09Whether or not Todd Munkin is a bridge coach, whether or not this team is just trying to get anything
13:15that they can out of Deshaun Watson, whether or not, as I have asked plenty of times before, this team
13:21really is just a quarterback away.
13:24All of those questions came back today because the operations were bad, because Deshaun Watson looked washed, and because all
13:32across the team there were issues.
13:34There were so many false starts.
13:37There were so many delays of game.
13:40I think it goes like that.
13:41It's like attorneys general.
13:42There were so many instances where the quote-unquote operations and things that Todd Munkin told us were good and
13:50much better out of Deshaun Watson than they were out of Shador Sanders were awful.
13:54That genuinely looked like a quarterback today that walked onto the field at a group of five school and went
14:03up against a team like Ohio State and just looked awful.
14:08That is the feeling that I got from it.
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