The 17 hits Deshaun Watson absorbed from the Dallas Cowboys defense weren't even the worse he took over the weekend. (Dallas Cowboys)
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.
Over an hour after absorbing the last of 17 mostly brutal hits administered by the Dallas Cowboys’ defense, Deshaun Watson sat at his locker in deep conversation with Jameis Winston, his No. 1 advocate and supporter.
GM Andrew Berry already had paid a visit and encouraged him to “keep your head up.”
Watson was still in uniform. The grass stains on front and back of his jersey and pants told the story of a long-anticipated return to the field gone awry.
Watson’s 2024 debut in front of a football-hungry home crowd couldn’t have gone worse, save for injury. Watson refused to leave the game despite a long-lost cause, 33-17, to the Cowboys and all those hits.
“None of them really hurt, honestly,” Watson said. “You know, it’s football, so you hop back up and make sure you’re not hurt and you just go on to the next play.”
There was pain in Watson’s heart, however, and that was why Winston spent so much time talking things out with him after the game.
“It’s been a long week,” Watson said. “You know, at the end of the day, football is definitely something that you got to take very, very seriously and it’s our job. It’s our career, but you know, there are other things that are bigger than this.”
Watson then disclosed that he lost his dad on Friday and lost a former Clemson teammate, Diondre Overton, who was shot and killed in Greensboro, NC, on Saturday.
“I mean, it’s been a long week, and [the Browns] gave me the opportunity to go back home, but I told them I wanted to be here with my guys,” Watson said. “So [the deep talk with Winston] wasn’t even really about football. It was really just kind of his first time seeing me over the weekend, kind of … let me know he’s here with me.”
The revelations cast a different light on Watson’s game, of course.
He was under siege from beginning to end by a Dallas defense now coordinated by Mike Zimmer, Kevin Stefanski’s boss when they coached together with the Minnesota Vikings.
Although nobody else knew what to expect from the Browns’ new-look offense, which didn’t play together at all in preseason, Zimmer seemed to have an unedited copy of the playbook Stefanski and new offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey cobbled together in their 8+ months together.
Watson’s numerous short throws went nowhere and his longer throws were mostly uncatchable – out of the end zone or out of bounds or behind receivers. He finished the game with worse-than-pedestrian numbers – 24 of 45 for 169 yards and an ungodly 3.8 yards-per-attempt average.
Watson’s only good up-tempo drive resulted in a 6-yard TD to Jerry Jeudy. But he was intercepted twice on balls deflected – once by Dallas disrupter Micah Parsons and once off the hands of intended receiver Elijah Moore.
When Watson finally aimed one on target to Amari Cooper breaking behind the Dallas secondary with 3:40 to go in the game, Cooper dropped it in the end zone. Watson paid the price with a direct hit to his sternum by Dallas end DeMarcus Lawrence.
Watson was not helped by seven penalties on offense, including three by right tackle Dawand Jones and one by left tackle James Hudson, who started and played the entire game.
“Too sloppy. It’s disappointing,” said Stefanski. “We don’t practice that way. You can’t play that way because that’s just, again, it’s hard to win in this league. Don’t want to make it harder on yourself.”
The all-too-obvious second guess is that Stefanski did not play the vast majority of regulars – offensively and defensively – in the three preseason games. Every facet of the team, in fact, looked like it was getting its first live action in eight months.
“That’s no excuse,” Stefanski said. “Really isn’t enough.”
Watson said, “Some people can say that can contribute a lot, you know … my injury, guys missing time. But at the end of the day, once you’re on the field, you just gotta perform, you gotta execute. And, you know, we didn’t do that overall. And yeah, it showed.”
On a day calling for the defense and special teams to pick up the slack, both units failed badly.
Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott built a 20-3 halftime lead with two superbly efficient touchdown drives on which, Myles Garrett said, the Browns didn’t communicate “well enough or quick enough” to keep pace.
Prescott, who broke the bank of owner Jerry Jones before the game when he and the Cowboys agreed to a four-year contract for $240 million – including $231 million fully guaranteed, 1 million more than Watson’s epic deal with the Browns – finished with only 179 yards passing and one TD to Brandin Cooks. But his two TD drives in the first half and Brandon Aubrey’s two of four made field goals served to intensify Zimmer’s pressure on Watson the rest of the day.
The Browns’ special teams also didn’t show up, except for a 28-yard punt return by Jaelon Darden that set up Dustin Hopkins’ 51-yard field goal for a 3-0 Browns lead.
After that, Bubba Ventrone’s units failed to recover a kickoff that squirted out of the end zone after landing in the landing zone, which put the offense at the 20-yard line; gave the Cowboys a short field after a botched punt out of bounds of 33 yards; and was burned for a 60-yard punt return for a touchdown by KaVontae Turpin. That was a backbreaker and increased the Cowboys’ lead to 27-3 after the Browns owned the first possession to start the second half.
The Browns tried to temper their emotions after the disheartening season debut in front of a revved-up home crowd that booed loudly throughout the sunny afternoon.
“They have the right to tell us however they feel,” said Garrett, who visited the Muni Lot before the game to stir up the early revelers. “I mean, if we’re not playing well, they have the right to boo. If we’re kicking [butt], they have the right to cheer. It’s their privilege.
“They come in, they pay to see us do well and we didn’t, and we got to put on better performance if we expect them to go out there and support us in full force. So we got to be better, and that’s all on us.”
Guard Wyatt Teller said, “It’s Game 1. Calm down. It sucks. But calm down.”
Added Cooper, “End of day, it’s one loss. The good teams fix their mistakes.”