There is considerable debate about whether the Cleveland Browns will stick with Jameis Winston or return to Deshaun Watson next season, though one NFL insider says that neither potential outcome will come to fruition.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell predicted on Thursday, December 12, that the Browns will instead replace both men with a rookie quarterback they will select in the 2025 draft, which comes around next April.
Winston’s most positive characteristic is that he’s not Deshaun Watson. The fact that the offense has gone from being one of the worst in recent NFL history with Watson under center to 25th in EPA per play over Winston’s six starts is a reflection of both his strengths and limitations.
Anybody would be better than Watson, and after he ended his disastrous season by tearing an Achilles in October, the Browns were essentially given an out for moving on from him as their full-time starter. (They’ll still be paying him $92 million over the next two years, but that’s a sunk cost and not enough to justify keeping him on the field.)
If the Browns decide to bench Watson permanently, he may be off of the roster ahead of next season. Or, if things are amicable enough between the team and quarterback, Cleveland may choose to keep Watson in the position group should it find itself in need of a backup for its QB of the future.
Who that quarterback will end up being is not something that Barnwell predicted directly, though he did write that the Browns’ starter in Week 1 of next season will be “a rookie quarterback selected in the 2025 draft.”
Browns Probably Won’t Land Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward in NFL Draft
Were the league to hold the draft tomorrow, the Browns would select No. 8 overall. However, they are in a six-way tie for the second-worst record in the NFL at 3-10 and could easily slide up the board over the final month of the campaign.
That said, Cleveland will probably need to get lucky if the franchise hopes to land one of the top two quarterbacks on the board — Shedeur Sanders of Colorado or Cam Ward of Miami.
Instead, it is more likely that the Browns reach for a player in the second half of the top-10, perhaps Jalen Milroe of Alabama who showed legitimate dual-threat capability during his team’s three-loss campaign in 2024.
Browns May Bring Back Jameis Winston if NFL Draft Doesn’t Shake Out Right
The most likely scenario in which Barnwell is wrong will come about if more than two quarterbacks are off the board before the Browns hit the clock in the first round of the draft, and Cleveland subsequently decides it doesn’t want to spend top-10 value on a player with a second-round, or even third-round, grade.
In that case, the team may decide to bring Winston back, as he has proven the ability to create a connection with both his teammates in the locker room and the fan base.
Winston’s rise in Cleveland this year is similar to that of Joe Flacco’s last season, though the Browns chose to move on from Flacco so as not to stoke controversy involving outside pressure to bench Watson — for whom the team continued to hold out hope heading into 2024.
Winston is playing on just a $4 million deal this season, though that price would almost certainly go up if the Browns attempt to re-sign him in March.
