Meaningful Cleveland Browns football returns Sunday when the team travels to Jacksonville to take on the Jaguars in Week 1 of the 2026 NFL regular season. Deshaun Watson won the starting quarterback job over Shedeur Sanders during the preseason, and the Browns will hand him the keys to the offense as Cleveland opens on the road. 

Watson, likely in his final year with the Browns, has quite the opportunity in front of him for the rest of his football career from this point on.

Where Watson’s career goes from here will be heavily impacted by what he does on the field and whether he can turn the ship around after multiple rough seasons of quarterback play in Cleveland.

Deshaun Watson needs to prove he can stay on the field 

First and foremost, Watson needs to show he can stay healthy. He hasn’t played in more than seven games in a season since 2020, when he was a Pro Bowler with the Houston Texans. His seven games played in 2024 were the most he’d logged since then, and that season ended with an Achilles rupture that forced him to miss all of 2025. In each of the two seasons before that, Watson played in six games each between a suspension and a shoulder injury that wiped him out in 2023.

Watson’s best football in Cleveland came during that 2023 stretch when he went 5-1 as a starter with 1,115 passing yards, seven touchdowns, and four interceptions. Still, those aren’t great numbers for six starts, and Watson hasn’t been able to reclaim the level of quarterback play he once had with the Texans.

The first few games of the season are going to be an opportunity for Watson to try to hit lightning in a bottle and regain that form, or anything close to it. Any success he has will carry weight beyond the stat sheet.

The Browns fan base is watching Deshaun Watson closely

Watson’s performance matters for his football future, but it also matters for a fan base that has grown tired of waiting. Watson and Browns fans are on rocky terms, to say the least. Cleveland’s fan base has grown tired of waiting for Watson to be what they thought he could be when the team sent three first-round draft picks to Houston for him, and it’s never materialized.

The first two games come on the road against the Jaguars and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That won’t be an easy test, but it’s a huge opportunity for Watson to show he deserves another NFL contract, whether it is in Cleveland or elsewhere. If Watson can play the quarterback position at an acceptable level before the Browns return home in Week 3, it changes the narrative. If he’s playing well, the fan base isn’t going to be booing him the way they did in the preseason, which created a big commotion around the organization.

It could not be stated any louder how key this season is for Watson at 30 years old and where his football career goes from here.