Are You Buying Todd Monken’s Reasoning for Starting Deshaun Watson in Week 2?

Deshaun Watson is starting again, and Rich has been saying for months that he would, because of the business side of it.

Week 1 made the case for him. Watson went down the tubes against Buffalo's third stringers in front of Cleveland fans who booed him, then went to the podium and admitted he is still upset about the fans who cheered when he got hurt. Rich finds that understandable. What Watson did next was paint the entire fan base with the same brush, and he still got the start.

That was the business explanation, and it held. What Rich is less sure about is whether it still applies.

Todd Monken watched the tape from Sunday and said he saw some really good things on it. Rich is careful here, and fair about it. Monken is the expert. Nobody on this show is breaking down all-22 for a living.

But Week 1 and Week 2 are different arguments. Week 1, you can eat a bad outing for contractual reasons. Week 2, you have to start winning games, and Monken is saying he genuinely believes Watson gives Cleveland the better chance to win in Tampa against a quarterback who would love nothing more than to send the Browns home 0-2.

Monken insists no outside force is driving this. What made the answer land differently is that he extended it to inside forces, including his own locker room.

"They don't have a choice. This isn't a debate," Monken said. "I don't ask the players what play I'm going to call, what play we're going to call on defense. Their job's to play, our job's to put the best player on the field that we think gives us a chance to win. And I love our guys. But the moment we get into that, in terms of who this guy should be playing, what we ought to be calling, we've lost sight of the target. Which is to own it and fix it and try like hell to get better."

He closed by saying he does not blame people for having opinions, but that it is on everyone to support whoever is on the field.

Rich respects the bluntness and still thinks it creates a problem.

There are rooms a coach does not have to read. He does not have to read the stadium. He does not have to read the fans. He does not have to read shows like this one, and Rich said so plainly. That is all true as long as ownership is behind him.

The locker room is different.

"Coaches have to read the room when the room is their locker room," Rich said. Saying out loud that the players do not get a vote is technically correct. It also makes everyone wonder what the players actually think.

Which is why a short answer from fourth year safety Ronnie Hickman is going to travel. Asked whether he liked the continuity of Monken giving Watson another week in the starting role, Hickman offered five words.

"That's above my pay grade."

Rich has been around long enough to know that answer means different things depending on the standings. In a winning situation, it reads as a player being an extension of his head coach. Players play, coaches coach.

In a losing situation, it reads as a punt. If Hickman liked Watson and wanted him out there, the answer is that they are absolutely behind him. Someone at the desk had the better comparison, calling it the verbal version of Joe Burrow's I work here hat.

None of this is settled, and Rich does not think it survives another bad afternoon. The question he keeps circling is what happens if Cleveland does in Tampa what it just did in Jacksonville, with Watson standing out there in front of a fan base that does not want him.

The prediction from the desk was that Shedeur Sanders shows up in Week 2 regardless, coming in at halftime if it is 24-0 or 24-3.

Stay tuned, Rich said, because the team on the other sideline just turned it over repeatedly, Mayfield included, and would love to build exactly that kind of lead.