Browns Analyst Joe Thomas Talks Deshaun Watson, Shedeur & More with Rich

Joe Thomas has been standing on the practice field in Berea for weeks, and the version of the Browns quarterback competition he watched is not the one that went viral.

Thomas told Rich that everybody around the team had both quarterbacks making real progress in Todd Monken's system, with Deshaun Watson slightly ahead because of what experience buys him there. Monken puts an enormous amount on the quarterback at the line of scrimmage, with many calls carrying two plays built in, so the quarterback can change the play, change the snap count, and use the cadence as a weapon.

Then came Saturday.

"For people that were just tuning in, watching Shedeur in that game only, it was very obvious who the better quarterback was in that game," Thomas said. Shedeur Sanders played well through the first half. Watson came in for the third quarter against Buffalo's third team and did not.

That gap is why naming Watson the Week 1 starter landed the way it did.

Rich asked what Thomas, who knows this fan base as well as anyone alive, would say to Watson about repairing the relationship. The answer started with the ledger.

There has been an enormous investment in Watson and no payoff for what Thomas called the most loyal fan base in professional sports, a claim he backed by noting they keep showing up for a product that has not been good in decades.

"You have to understand that this fan base has been through hell and back, and they're still showing up," Thomas said.

His advice was blunt about the one available remedy. It cannot be personal, because the only way to change it is to play better football. Until Watson does, no bridges get mended.

On the schedule, Thomas thought Rich's hypothetical was more than possible. It is probable. Watson has to play well in the first two games and probably needs to win one of them to keep the job, because if Cleveland comes home 0-2 having played badly and rolls Watson out in Week 3, it is not going to be a pretty picture.

Monken got the job with authority to make this call without oversight from upper management, and he made it on one question: which quarterback runs my offense and gives us the best chance to win in Week 1. Underneath the fan frustration is something more specific. Cleveland wants to see Sanders because two first-round picks are coming and the franchise has to know whether the answer is already in the building.

Thomas has been impressed with how Sanders has handled all of it, and the proof he offered was not about football.

"Shedeur's the first guy that defends their relationship," Thomas said. When people tried to drive a wedge between the two quarterbacks, Sanders shut it down, saying it is a competition, that he loves Watson and wants him to be at his best, and that if he wins the job he wants to win it on merit. After Watson was named the starter, Sanders turned the conversation back on himself and what he has to do to earn it.

On Monken, Thomas said the coach has already earned equity in Cleveland by telling it exactly how it is, and Rich landed the comparison Thomas agreed with immediately: he sounds like Parcells.

"He is not about anything except for winning and accountability," Thomas said, and added the player's-eye view. That is the coach he always wanted, one who does not parse words about what you need to do to keep your job.

The rest of the roster is the part getting lost, with Quinshon Judkins, Harold Fannin Jr. and a young core Rich rattled through. As he put it to the man who never missed a snap and has seen the jersey with 90 quarterback names on the back, you just have to get that position right.

"Always something to talk about in Cleveland," Thomas said.

He is also in the beef business now. Hall of Fame Farms started when his kids decided the family's Wisconsin farm was not a real farm without animals, which became five cows and a bull in 2018 and eventually the short rib served at the gold jacket dinner. Thomas told nobody beforehand that it was his, specifically so the feedback would be honest. One of the cattlemen called it some of the best beef he had ever had.