The Browns’ 3-1 start has brought the noise back, but not all of it is about football.
After Cleveland beat the Carolina Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers in back-to-back weeks, plenty of rival fans took aim at Browns supporters for cheering Deshaun Watson. That backlash has become the latest flashpoint around a team that spent years drowning in losses and baggage, only to finally give its fan base something worth celebrating.
That reaction misses the point.
NFL fandom is built around the team, not the individual. It’s why fans cling to the jersey on the field even when the name inside it makes them uncomfortable. The sport is sold city by city, adopted by communities, and defended by people who invest their money, time and emotions into the laundry more than the person wearing it.
Watson’s history is no secret. He was accused by more than two dozen women who alleged sexual misconduct during massage therapy sessions, and he eventually settled many of the civil cases brought against him. The Browns pursued him anyway and paid a ransom to the Houston Texans for the privilege of his quarterbacking services.
That move has not gone the way Cleveland hoped. Four years later, the Browns have gone 7-10, 11-6, 3-14, and 5-12 in the seasons that followed. The one playoff trip came during a made-for-television run by veteran quarterback Joe Flacco after Watson was injured again, and the Browns pulled Flacco in off the couch to steady the ship.
So yes, Watson’s time in Cleveland has been an abject disaster. Fans have lived through the losses, the frustration and the fallout from a massive swing and a miss. But cheering when the Browns win is not the same thing as excusing Watson’s past.
It’s cheering for the Browns.
And that distinction matters. Rooting for the quarterback in a given moment does not mean fans are endorsing every part of his life or pretending his history doesn’t exist. It means their team is winning, and that is what they came to see.
The other part of this is simple enough: Cleveland is hardly alone in having employed players with troubling histories. Every team in the league has had to live with some version of that reality. Fans learn to separate the person from the uniform because, in pro football, that’s often the only way to keep rooting without losing the whole enterprise.
The Browns also aren’t built around one man. They have 53 players on the active roster, another 16 on the practice squad, and 10 on reserve lists.
That’s 79 players trying to carve out a career and bring a winner to Cleveland, plus more than a dozen coaches doing the same. Ignoring all of that because of the accusations against one player doesn’t make much sense.
Ahead of the 2026 season, Cleveland moved on from Kevin Stefanski, the head coach who brought Watson in. Todd Monken took over and brought a different edge entirely - a swashbuckling outlaw with a colorful vocabulary and the bravado to match. Few outside of Monken believed in the hire, but the Browns are 3-1 and a lot of people who doubted them are eating crow.
That’s why the outrage over Browns fans cheering has gone too far.
Fans can think whatever they want about Watson as a player or a person. But the Browns as a team will always be bigger than any one individual, and the people who live and die with this franchise are entitled to enjoy a start that suggests something better might finally be coming.
The Cleveland Browns are 3-1, and the fan base deserves to bask in it.
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Deshaun Watson has already acknowledged Gabriels involvement around the team during his own injury absence, and he sounded confident in the quarterbacks Cleveland has on hand. The real question now is whether Gabriel pushes for the backup job or settles in as an emergency third option, a decision the Browns have to make while trying to keep the position stable and avoid another headache later on. [Read more 🡒]