The Berea Record · In the QB room
Monken came to build an offense in layers. On August 21 his quarterbacks coach named the first rule — take care of the football — and then described each quarterback against it.
This page argues. The Record reconstructs and stops at what happened. Practice statistics are one outlet's charting, independently corroborated. Not official statistics.
The premise
He came to build one in layers. That distinction is becoming the most important part of the quarterback decision.
Quarterbacks coach Mike Bajakian explained it himself on August 8. Early in camp Cleveland was installing fundamentals; as the offense progressed, he said the Browns were already reaching the third or fourth layer — the point where a quarterback has to understand not merely his assignment but the intent behind the play call.
That is Monken's real offensive project. And it is why Deshaun Watson increasingly looks like a roadblock to it.
On August 21, Bajakian laid out the quarterback rules in order. The order is the whole thing.
He said it first, then explained why: win the turnover battle and your chances of winning rise dramatically.
The ordinary throw, on time, on schedule.
Decide, and let it go.
Then he added the part that connects the rules to the scheme: know the intention of the play caller. If a shot is called and the defense takes it away, do not force the shot — understand why it was called, recognize that the picture changed, and find the completion instead.
That sentence quietly dismantles the loudest argument against Sanders. Processing speed is not being described inside the building as his fatal deficiency. It is being described as the thing every quarterback on the roster has to keep improving.
The first rule is take care of the football. Twelve to four says who has.
Rule one is not a tiebreaker somebody invented after the fact. It is the standard the staff stated out loud, before either quarterback was discussed.
Every coach adapts to his quarterback. The problem begins when the quarterback forces the coach to keep removing things.
Get the call, line everybody up, protect the football.
Cadence, protections, checks, progressions. The part no stat sheet records.
Understanding why the play was called, and what answer was built into it.
Moving defensive looks, changing the answer at the line, attacking the matchup.
Explosives, and an answer ready for when the defense defeats the original design.
Cleveland has installed the first. Then the second. Bajakian says they are already teaching the third and fourth. The entire objective is to keep going.
So the question is no longer whether Watson can execute Layer One. It is whether keeping him at quarterback prevents Monken from ever comfortably reaching Three, Four and Five.
Two layers built. Three to go.
Cleveland is not choosing a quarterback for the offense it has installed. It is choosing one for the offense it has not finished installing.
This is not an argument that he has not worked. He has.
Watson ruptured his Achilles in October 2024, had surgery, suffered a setback and needed a second procedure in January 2025. He spent the year rehabilitating, returned to limited practice in December, and arrived this offseason healthy enough to compete.
The Browns have praised how seriously he attacked the new system. Bajakian said Watson had studied Baltimore film before Cleveland's coaches could even work with him, and called him a fast processor. He came back in the summer to work with his own therapist and organized extra throwing with teammates.
This is not about effort. It is about what happened after all of it.
And the operational credit is real, not invented. On August 21 Bajakian said Watson got Cleveland into a lot of the right plays, manipulated protections well, managed the line of scrimmage, made a couple of explosives, threw well on the move, hit K.C. Concepcion downfield, and responded well after a poor red-zone stretch. That is a genuine veteran advantage and this page does not dispute it.
Notice what came immediately afterward. Asked about Watson pressing the ball downfield, Bajakian answered by laying out the rules, beginning with the first one — then described a shot play where the coverage was not right, and said the quarterback has to recognize the play was not called for that look and find a completion rather than chase the shot.
Explosives are wanted. They are also subordinate to intent, recognition, and the football.
After an ugly beginning, he settled. Bajakian praised a stretch where Watson protected the ball, became more decisive and got it out on time. For a while that looked like the answer.
One square is one interception, in practice order. Same days, same chartists, same offense.
Then it came back. Twelve camp interceptions to Sanders' four, and more important than the total is the direction: six of them in his final ten practices, while Sanders closed on eight consecutive interception-free days.
The regression is not buried in the first week. On August 19, working with the second team, Watson was intercepted twice with another possible pick dropped. Then came Buffalo.
Forget the first three weeks. These are the days immediately before the decision, and the only ones where the stabilization could be tested.
| Day | Sanders | Watson | What it showed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 18Padded | 0 TD · 0 INT | 1 TD · 0 INT | Watson took the first-team work and the defense controlled the passing game. A deep touchdown to Isaiah Bond; Denzel Ward broke up two more. Monken ended it early over the defense's physicality.Neutral. Not a separation day either way. |
| Aug 19Second team | 3 TD · 0 INT | 1 TD · 2 INT | Watson threw it well for much of the day and still produced three turnover-worthy outcomes: a 50-50 ball to Tylan Wallace wrestled away by Tre Avery, a Michael Coats interception near the goal line, and a third dropped by Emmanuel McNeil-Warren in red-zone seven-on-seven.Sanders drove into field-goal range and spiked before the line was set — illegal procedure, ten-second runoff, game over. Each quarterback showed his own problem on the same afternoon. |
| Aug 20Bills joint | 2 TD · 0 INT | 1 TD · 1 INT | The Concepcion throw, and then another red-zone interception, to Jordan Hancock.Sanders added multiple downfield completions and drew the Bills offsides on a free play. |
Grossi read it the other way — that Monken could live with interceptions more easily than with Sanders' operational errors. That is his interpretation of Monken, not Monken saying turnovers do not matter. And two days later Bajakian put the football first, out loud, unprompted.
One qualification, because it matters: the first of the August 19 interceptions was a contested ball wrestled away, not a bad decision. Three picks is not three equally bad reads. The cluster is still the cluster.
Three picks in the last two practices. None the other way.
Six of Watson's twelve came in his final ten days — after the staff had already watched the problem, addressed it, and called it corrected.
The joint practice · August 20
Watson produced one of the flashiest throws of the day, drilling a deep ball to K.C. Concepcion between two defenders — exactly the sort of throw that generates a clip and changes the mood around a competition.
Later, in red-zone work, he missed an open Harold Fannin Jr. and threw another interception, to Bills defensive back Jordan Hancock, who read the throw and took it. Monken has to build an offense around everything that happens between those two plays.
A competition cannot be graded from the best clip of practice.
Especially not when the same practice contained another red-zone interception. The throw shows Watson can still make a difficult NFL throw. It does not show that throwing into that picture was the decision Monken wanted.
The same goes for the improvisational throws people have fixed on, underhand releases included. The aesthetics are beside the point. The question is why the quarterback had to create that solution, whether it was the correct decision, and whether the ball was put at unnecessary risk.
By the third and fourth layer, Cleveland is not teaching first read, second read. It is teaching why the play was called.
At that level the quarterback has to recognize what the defense is taking away, understand the answer Monken built into the call, and get to it without putting the football in danger. That is where recurring turnovers stop being an ordinary camp statistic.
If the interceptions were rust in late July, you live with them. If they vanished as he mastered the offense, you call the rehabilitation a success. But they vanished — and then returned. That is regression, and it raises the possibility that Cleveland is not watching Watson unlock the offense so much as finding the point where expanding his responsibility starts producing unacceptable risk.
If that is true, the fix is smaller menus. Faster throws. More defined reads, more handoffs, fewer chances to hold the ball and solve a complicated picture. Watson can be made functional that way. Functional is not what Monken was hired to build.
Not a finished product — operational mistakes, a bad interception against Chicago, the spike before the line was set. The arrow is what differs, and on August 21 the coach described the arrow.
Asked directly how Sanders is doing with all the operations, Bajakian did not hedge.
Then the detail. His base is outstanding. He is playing from a strong athletic platform. He is getting through his progressions. On one rep he missed an open player and did not panic — he kept his composure, worked his feet, found the back in the flat, and kept the offense on schedule. He is doing a great job mechanically. A great job procedurally. And he is growing every day in cadence and checks and all that other stuff.
That is not “talented, but the operation is holding him back.” That is a coach describing the operation as something becoming a strength while it is still developing — and the example he chose is exactly the football Monken wants. Miss the first answer. Do not panic. Reset the feet. Take the ordinary completion. Stay on schedule.
Asked what Sanders has to show against Buffalo, Bajakian went straight back to the same standard: protect it, complete it, make good decisions, manage the line of scrimmage. Then he said Monken has deliberately thrown a lot at these quarterbacks and made them execute the entire package — and that they will keep challenging Sanders in the game to get into the right calls and protections, and take explosives only when the shots are actually there.
That is the most useful sentence in the interview, and it is not about either quarterback. Monken is not feeding Sanders a rookie menu and Watson an adult one — which means the operational gap may be smaller than the outside narrative assumes.
The weakness that was supposed to end it is the one his coach now calls great.
Mechanically strong, composed, procedural, improving every day in cadence and checks. That is the scouting report on the thing Sanders was supposed to fail at.
With Sanders
How much more offense can we unlock as his operation improves?
The weakness that was supposed to disqualify him is the exact thing his coach now calls great stuff, and describes as improving every day.
With Watson
How much offense do we have to remove to keep the turnovers from returning?
The operational strength is real and praised. The failure is Rule One, and it came back in the last two practices.
Those are completely different trajectories, and only one points at the offense Monken described. He has repeatedly called coaching a development business, and Cleveland hired him partly for a reputation for developing young players inside an adaptable plan.
Where the decision stops being purely schematic.
Cleveland did not merely sign Watson. The organization traded three first-round picks as part of the package and gave him a fully guaranteed $230 million contract. Owner Jimmy Haslam later called it a “big swing and miss.”
That history matters even if everyone in the building wants to pretend 2026 begins on a blank sheet. Watson himself said this summer that Monken and the organization would choose the starter.
Three first-round picks. $230m guaranteed. One blank sheet of paper.
Nobody has produced evidence of an instruction, and none is alleged here. Weight of that size does not require one to be felt.
If he does, this is simple: evaluate the football, decide who protects possession and lets the system keep expanding, start him.
If the decision is broader, the pressure does not need anyone to believe Watson is better — only that the franchise has spent four years and the largest investment it has ever made at the position trying to extract something from it.
Nobody has produced evidence that Haslam or Berry has ordered Monken to start Watson. Asking whether the weight could still be felt is legitimate — particularly when Watson describes the choice as belonging to Monken and the organization.
He probably is, in the narrowest sense.
Cleveland can script completions, manufacture easy throws, lean on the run, use screens and defined reads, reduce exposure. That is almost the wrong question. Monken was not hired to design a serviceable offense around Deshaun Watson. He was hired to build something better.
Watson may not merely be losing a competition. He may be placing a ceiling on the offense.
The more Monken asks of the position, the more dangerous Watson becomes. The more the offense is simplified around him, the further Cleveland moves from the system Monken came to build.
That is why Buffalo matters so much for Sanders. If he protects the football, handles the operation and executes enough of the expanding package, the football argument for keeping him behind Watson becomes very hard to explain.
And if Cleveland still chooses Watson, the most important question in Berea is no longer who won the competition. It is whether Todd Monken is actually free to choose the quarterback who lets him build the offense he came here to build.
Monken is trying to reach Layers Three, Four and Five. Watson increasingly looks like a quarterback who does not solve that problem. Sanders might. The question now is whether the organization will align.
Watson is praised for the veteran parts — protections, right plays, line of scrimmage — while the staff's stated first rule is the thing he has just violated three times in two practices. Sanders is described as mechanically strong, composed, procedural, improving daily in cadence and checks: the one thing that was supposed to keep him out.
Sanders' principal weakness is moving in the right direction at the precise moment Watson's has resurfaced. That is what makes Saturday clean: run the package, manage the line, take the ordinary completion, protect the football — and the last real question about him is answered, while Watson's is still sitting there.