Todd Monken Defends Deshaun Watson After His Rant Against Fans

Deshaun Watson had better have the best September of his football career otherwise Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken is going to look very foolish, very quickly. Watson made waves at the end of the preseason when he went off on 'disrespectful' fans and asserted that the boos he receives have nothing to do with his performance. He was subsequently named the Browns' starting QB. Appearing on 92.3 The Fan on Tuesday, Monken defended Watson, dismissing the controversial remarks as him not being 'in a great headspace.' He said that Watson was just frustrated after a rough game and sees his comment as 'a speed bump' in terms of his confidence in himself. 'I mean, after that game — I'll just say during the game and then after the game, certainly Deshaun was not in a great headspace. Let's be real honest about it,' Monken told Ken Carman and Anthony Lima. 'He said it after the game, he was frustrated, and didn't particularly play well. And we don't coach well and call it well around him. So, we certainly all have to own that. 'I looked at it more along the lines of a speed bump and just a blip on the radar more than the norm of what I had seen over the course of the five months being here, in terms of his confidence, how hard he's worked to get back to where he's at today. And he did, he came to me right after that, him and I had a good conversation, and he said, 'I'm not sure I handled that the right way. But I did have things that were on my heart.' And I asked him, I said, 'Do you feel like you've gotten rid of it?' Because it's one thing to say it. It's another thing to really believe it, that OK, I needed to get this off my chest, it's over, I just want to go out there and play great football. I've worked awfully hard to get back.' It shouldn't be a surprise that Monken is defending the man he already named the starting quarterback, especially with just five days to go before the Browns' first kickoff of 2026. Monken is pretty clearly staking his entire first season at the helm on Watson not only being good, but as good as he was at the height of his football career. To be fair, he didn't have a ton of great options between Watson's bloated contract, second-year QB Shedeur Sanders' inconsistency and a number of below-average backups. That being said, the Browns have a long history of giving very little time for head coaches to make a good impression. Before his predecessor Kevin Stefanski took over and delivered the Browns to the playoffs in his first year, the team had hired and fired six head coaches between 2009 and 2019. Not one of those coaches lasted three full seasons and two of them went one-and-done. Suffice it to say, Monken had better be a darn good coach if he hopes to make the team look competent, let alone good. Copyright The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved This story was originally published September 8, 2026 at 12:40 PM.