TAMPA, Fla. - For a Browns team still searching for traction, Sunday’s game in Tampa keeps circling back to two quarterbacks with very different Cleveland storylines: Deshaun Watson trying to hold onto his job, and Baker Mayfield looking to put another strong performance on his latest team against the franchise that moved on from him.
That’s the emotional center of Browns vs. Buccaneers, but it’s also the football reality.
Watson is in a fragile spot after a rough opener at Jacksonville, while Mayfield arrives with the kind of confidence that comes from a career reset in Tampa Bay. And for a couple of former Browns teammates, the matchup carries a little extra edge.
Safety Grant Delpit is one of only two current Browns who were teammates with Mayfield in Cleveland’s 2021 season. Cornerback Denzel Ward is the other. Delpit will also turn 29 on Sept. 20, the same day he’ll line up against his former teammate.
“Yeah, I mean, he's going to, quarterbacks like that, they try to try you,” Delpit said this week. “He's been on the Browns, we've seen how it could go one of two ways, you know what I'm saying?
So hopefully we do what we got to do as a defense and get some things done, man. It's my birthday on Sunday, so I hope I get a gift.”
Mayfield’s first meeting with Cleveland since the trade came in his opening game with Carolina, a 26-24 Browns win. This one feels different, because Mayfield is no longer the quarterback trying to find himself after the breakup. He’s now the player who has rebuilt his career, signed a three-year, $165-million extension before the season-opening loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, and helped Tampa Bay win two NFC South titles while nearly adding a third.
Mayfield talked this week about what that growth has looked like.
“I think probably the biggest one, trying to be the same person each and every day for the guys in the locker room, the people you work with, the staff that you're around each day,” Mayfield said of the lessons learned. “That some things are out of your control.
If you're trying to get it fixed and you're not worried about the football aspect of your job, you're probably letting some things slide and fall by the wayside. So I think controlling who I am each and every day, trying to lead the best way possible and control the offense and ultimately win.”
The Browns’ decision to move on from Mayfield and trade for Watson in March 2022 defined the next chapter in Cleveland. The team gave up three first-round picks and handed Watson a fully guaranteed five-year, $230-million contract, despite more than two dozen allegations through the legal system by women of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in massage appointment.
What followed has been stop-start and unresolved. Watson missed 11 games in his first season because of a suspension tied to those allegations, then missed another 11 in 2023 with a shoulder injury.
Cleveland still made the playoffs that year, thanks to Joe Flacco and a top-ranked defense. A torn Achilles in mid-October 2024 ended Watson’s season after the final 10 games, and cost him all of the 2025 season.
That made the Sept. 13 opener at Jacksonville his first game in 693 days. The final numbers - 16-of-22, 205 yards, one touchdown, one interception, 97.7 passer rating - look respectable, but the first half told the real story. Watson was 8-of-13 for 75 yards with an interception and a 45.4 rating, and Cleveland fell behind 31-0 before the offense even got the ball in the second half.
“I mean, yeah, there's always things that you can build on,” Watson said. “Again, this is my first real game in two years, so there's some good things, there's some things that we want to correct on. So just overall just being operating as a quarterback and find a way to, like I just mentioned, just creating successful drives, get points on the board so we can have a chance to win again.”
Watson’s comments this week suggested he isn’t spending much time thinking about the possibility of losing his starting job. But the pressure is there anyway. The Browns are heading toward their Sept. 26 home opener against the Carolina Panthers, and another rough outing could open the door to a change at quarterback, with backup Shedeur Sanders waiting in the background.
Watson said he sees the outside chatter as noise.
“I think personally, I think all that is for the media,” Watson said this week. “I think the media has this expectation that I'm supposed to throw 400 yards and five touchdowns every week.
So until that happens, I guess it's going to be the same situation. So again, my job is to make sure I'm operating well so we can try to get a win and keep moving forward from there.”
If Watson is going to steady things, he’ll likely need to match Mayfield score for score. Mayfield has already faced Cleveland once since the trade, and he enters this one after throwing for 216 yards in the loss to Cincinnati, even though three fumbles led to 17 Bengals points in a 33-27 defeat.
That split is what makes Mayfield such a tricky opponent: the arm talent is still there, but so is the volatility.
Ward said he knows exactly what’s coming.
“Yeah, Baker's an old friend of mine, a good friend of mine,” Ward said this week. “And yeah, definitely any interception any week is always good, but definitely would enjoy getting one off of him this week.
But the main goal is to go in and win, but to get an interception is going to help us win. So hopefully I can go out there and help this team do that.”
The Browns defense will have to be better than it was in Jacksonville, where Trevor Lawrence completed 18-of-23 passes for 245 yards and four touchdowns and the unit failed to generate a takeaway. Delpit and Ward know that if Mayfield gets comfortable, Tampa Bay can make the afternoon long in a hurry.
So while the reunion angle grabs the attention, the bigger question is simpler: can Watson do enough to keep Cleveland moving, or will Mayfield be the one leaving Tampa with the sharper storyline?
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