The Cleveland Browns called up two defensive players from the practice squad Saturday as they finished getting ready for Sunday’s season opener and Todd Monken’s first regular-season game as head coach.
Cleveland elevated linebacker Nathaniel Watson and cornerback D’Angelo Ross for the road matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The club made the announcement a day before kickoff at EverBank Stadium.
The promotions give the Browns extra help on defense and special teams. They do not have to drop anyone from the 53-man roster to open a spot.
NFL rules let a team lift as many as two practice-squad players for a single game, which temporarily bumps the active roster to 55. Those players go back to the practice squad afterward and do not have to pass through waivers.
Each player can be elevated three times in a regular season. After that, a team has to sign him to the 53-man roster if it wants him available again. Getting elevated does not guarantee a player will dress, though both Watson and Ross look likely to be in uniform Sunday.
Watson, a sixth-round pick out of Mississippi State in 2024, has played in 14 career games. He saw action as a rookie, then missed all of last season on injured reserve.
Ross has appeared in 36 career games. He joined Cleveland last November and played seven games for the Browns down the stretch. After final cuts this summer, he landed back on the practice squad.
The extra cornerback matters. Depth behind starters Denzel Ward and Tyson Campbell has been a concern all offseason. Cleveland signed veteran Noah Igbinoghene on Sept. 1, and Ross gives the staff another option against Jacksonville’s passing game.
First-year defensive coordinator Mike Rutenberg has spent the week talking about a physical style after the Browns traded Myles Garrett to the Los Angeles Rams. Jared Verse now leads the pass rush. Last season, Cleveland finished fourth in the NFL in total defense under Jim Schwartz.
“When the ball is thrown, we’re arriving with bad intentions,” Rutenberg said. “We’re built off that. We choose violence in everything we do.”
The offense is the larger question mark. Deshaun Watson will start a regular-season game for the first time in nearly two years. An Achilles injury and a later setback cost him all of 2025. Monken still named him the starter after a training-camp competition with Shedeur Sanders.
Watson is 7-0 as a starter against the Jaguars. In those games he has averaged 222.7 passing yards with 11 total touchdowns — eight passing, three rushing — and a 94.6 passer rating. Six of the wins came when he played for the Houston Texans. The seventh was Cleveland’s 18-13 win in Jacksonville in Week 2 of 2024.
“I guess a majority of it was that was one of our big rival teams, being in that same division when I played for Houston,” Watson said. “So it was mandatory to try to get those games. They were very, very, very close, intense games, and we found ways to win. That’s pretty much all I can say about that.”
This week he brushed off the streak.
“This is 2026, man. So, I’m not going into this game looking at the 7-0 record at all,” Watson said. “Right now, we’ve got to focus on Jacksonville.”
Oddsmakers have Jacksonville as an 8.5-point favorite at FanDuel. The Jaguars won the AFC South last season in Liam Coen’s first year as head coach. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. Eastern on CBS.
One afternoon will not settle every debate about Watson, Monken or a defense that now plays without Garrett. It will give Cleveland its first chance to replace the talk with something that actually happened on the field.
