Deshaun Watson, a perfectionist, has looked frustrated at times during Browns training camp with the uneven performance of the new offense in team drills, but he says he’s just setting the bar high.
Furthermore, he said that his five-minute head-to-head talk with Jameis Winston after Monday’s practice — with both on one knee and Winston talking animatedly with his hands while Watson listened intently — was a routine encounter between the two, and not a pep talk after some challenging 11-on-11s.
“I think it’s an incorrect perception on me,” Watson said. “It’s not that I’m frustrated or anything like that. We all show emotion, but at the same time, like we said, we always want to strive for perfection. Sometimes we might show a little shrug or head nod or things like that, but don’t mean that we’re frustrated. We just want to make sure we capitalize and be successful on each play.
“And that’s what you want as a team. You don’t want anything to go negative, go wrong and no one cares about it. But overall, like I said before, it’s just keep stacking these days, keep growing, keep learning, and that’s all we can do. I think the best teams, not during just training camp, it’s ready for Week 1, but ready for Week 1 and the other 16 games. If you can continue to grow with that, that’s when the best teams become towards the end of the year.”
He said his post-practice pow-wow with Winston is a regular occurrence between the two. Winston, who delivered a fiery pre-game speech before the 23-10 loss to the Packers, is the inspirational leader of the Browns.
“That conversation was just a personal conversation,” he said. “It was just both of us just chopping it up. That’s how we always talk. So it wasn’t anything that was going on with practice or anything like that. It was just one of those deals that we were speaking on whatever we were speaking on at the moment. We just got finished with conditioning, so I was cooked, I was tired, and then he came over, he just being Jameis and just being a motivator, a leader, a good friend and a great teammate. So we were just talking about just everything that kind of went on.”
Watson acknowledged that the relationship between him and Winston is mutually beneficial. Watson has a lot on his plate this season coming off surgery to repair his fractured shoulder while learning a new offense and new coaching staff.
“Yeah, it’s going to help both of us,” he said. “I think coming from similar but different backgrounds, he’s played a lot of football, he’s been at the highest level, been around other pro quarterbacks. So for me it’s to be able to learn and build off the knowledge and then vice versa, him learning from me and what I see in different schemes and different offenses and success that I had. So we’re feeding off each other and not just us two, but the whole room, Snoop (Tyler Huntley), DTR (Dorian Thompson-Robinson), we’re a brotherhood so every time you see us moving it’s probably one of us with each other. So that’s the chemistry and the love that we have in that room is definitely one of the best I’ve ever had.”
In a recent practice inside the fieldhouse, Watson lightly kicked a ball after one rocky 11-on-11 period, and has looked exasperated at other times, especially when the great Myles Garrett has wreaked havoc and pressured him into incompletions or an occasional interception. On Monday, before the talk with Winston, Watson was picked off on a pass intended for Elijah Moore, and once again didn’t have the time he needed to throw.
In the first of two joint practices against the Vikings on Wednesday, the first-team offense had protection and communication problems and was flagged for numerous penalties. Regardless, Watson shook it off the best he could and completed some nice passes to David Njoku, Cedric Tillman, Jerry Jeudy, Amari Cooper and Elijah Moore. Despite the sloppy performance up front, it marked the first time Watson had his all of his starting weapons on the field, and they showed glimpses of how explosive they can be.
Some of the problems stemmed from the fact that the Browns were facing Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ 3-4 defense, one that mixes it up with multiple looks designed to be confusing. The Browns, who are alternating three players at left tackle — James Hudson III, Germain Ifedi and Hakeem Adeniji — while they wait for Jed Wills Jr. to return soon from his torn MCL, didn’t always handle the unorthodox looks well, and Watson was often ‘sacked’ or pressured into some errant throws.
“I don’t consider any of those problems,” Watson said. “It just comes down to communications, different looks. This is a joint practice. Usually, going through the week you kind of have preparation, looking at film, things like this, things like that. But in training camp, you kind of just show up and you kind of try to do the base rules, and sometimes the base rules, the defense might have tendencies that might override those base rules, what we talk about as an offense.
“So yeah, I’m very confident in my offensive line. Each one of those guys, they work hard, they study hard, they try hard. So all that stuff can be fixed and that’s why we go through training camps and we practice against different teams. But yeah, overall there’s some good things out there. Keep stacking these days, keep learning, keep growing from it. It’s not going to always be perfect, but we always strive to be perfect and that’s why we call it practice and training camp.”
#Browns Deshaun Watson on where’s at with just over 3 weeks to go before the opener: pic.twitter.com/wAKZBeRnbi
— Mary Kay Cabot (@MaryKayCabot) August 15, 2024
He knows he has to play the hand that’s dealt him at left tackle. Even when Wills returns, it will take him some time to get back up to speed, like it has for right Dawand Jones, who also underwent surgery to repair a torn MCL in December. The Browns are also awaiting the return of All-Pro right tackle Jack Conklin, but he had both his ACL and MCL repaired, and probably needs more time. Wills and Conklin are both on active/PUP.
“Whoever’s in is going to play hard,” Watson said. “They’re going to compete. That’s all we ask for is just to be able to be the best you and communicate with all the other guys up front to make sure we all are on the same page. We know our standard when we step out on the field.”
The protection issues have gotten noticeably worse since Myles Garrett hit the field on Day 10. He’s given the backup left tackle the business, getting them ready for the opener with no mercy. On Wednesday, the Vikings offensive tackles were no match for him, with Garrett getting near the quarterbacks more than a dozen times.
“I mean Myles is, he’s the best in the world, and I think everyone knows that,” Watson said. “So it’s not just good for me, but the whole offense and our offensive lineman. If you can block Myles or try to block Myles and you learn from him, then I think you can block anybody in this league. So it’s a blessing and it is great to have him on our team and call him a teammate and it’s fun to be able to go against Ian every day.”
Watson also finally had Jeudy in team drills on Wednesday, marking the first time in camp he’s had his trio of starting receivers on the field at the same time in 11-on-11s in Cooper, Jeudy, and Moore.
“Yeah, it’s coming along,” he said of his connection with Jeudy. “We’ve just got to continue to grow and continue to go. I think with everyone it’s just going to be able to do that. There [has] been limited times where I only played 12 games in the last two years, so the chemistry and the timing, especially with a new system, that’s going to continue to grow and that’s going to continue to go as the reps continue to build up and throughout training camp and throughout the season. So it’s going to be fun to just continue to have that.”
Watson, who was cleared for full contact before camp but won’t play until the preseason finale in Seattle Aug. 24, can’t promise that he won’t shrug his shoulders again, boot the ball a bit or get another nose-to-nose sermon from Winston. But he can promise that he cares enough to get things perfect before the Cowboys comes to town.
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