Chris Simms once sounded convinced that Shedeur Sanders would seize the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback job. Weeks later, the NBC analyst is looking back at training camp and the preseason and asking whether the competition was ever as open as it appeared.
The Browns spent the summer framing Deshaun Watson and Sanders as genuine rivals. They split first-team practice days and even traded snaps during a joint session with the Buffalo Bills. Game opportunities told a different story.
Watson started the preseason opener against the Chicago Bears and worked the first half with most of the starting offense. Sanders entered after halftime with the reserves. The following week Sanders started against Buffalo, but Cleveland made clear the lineup was built around backups.
That second preseason game is what Simms keeps returning to.
Speaking on Pro Football Talk, he said, “What if it wasn’t really that close? I think there’s some inklings you can draw there to sit there and go, you know, maybe it wasn’t. The fact that they didn’t even let Shedeur play with the starters in the preseason game No. 2, which we all thought was shocking. We all thought it was swayed for Deshaun Watson. He’s gonna start, he’s going to be the starter now.”
But was it ever really much of a competiton?
“Then he didn’t play well and he had the postgame press conference, self-inflicted moves and meltdown there about the reaction he got, and that made us go, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he can’t handle this. Maybe he won’t be the guy,'” Simms said of Watson. “But everything up to that point was pointing at it looks like Deshaun’s the starter. Those are the things I think about now in revisionist history and go, ‘Maybe it wasn’t as close as we thought it might be.’”
Watson completed only 5 of 12 passes for 36 yards and an interception in that second half and was booed by the home crowd. Afterward he insisted the reaction was personal rather than about performance.
Head coach Todd Monken named him the starter two days later, saying the full body of work mattered more than one night and that fan sentiment did not factor into the choice.
The decision lands as a grim reality check for Sanders, who went 3-4 in seven starts last season and entered camp with a real argument. Simms himself had been firmly in the younger quarterback’s corner.
In August, he declared, “I’ve come to the part with this quarterback competition that it’s Shedeur Sanders, it’s Shedeur Sanders, it’s Shedeur Sanders. Why even waste your time with Deshaun Watson?”
Watson has not played a regular-season snap since tearing his Achilles in October 2024. Cleveland opens at Jacksonville and then travels to Tampa Bay, and Monken cited Watson’s experience on the road as one reason for the call. Sanders remains the backup for now.
The preseason distribution of snaps, Simms suggests, may have telegraphed that outcome long before the official announcement.
