Cleveland Browns quarterback DeShaun Watson’s postgame comments after losing 33-17 to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday:
How do you feel physically after the first game back and taking all those hits?
“You know, just feel like…just played a football game. I feel like with all the adrenaline still kind of going, I’ll probably know better in the morning.”
Coach (Kevin Stefanski) said that you refused to come out. You did not want to come out of the game. Did he want to take you out? And you said, ‘no, I’m staying in?’
“Yeah, I’m going to finish the game for sure, regardless of what the score is. So, yeah, that’s just my mentality, just to compete. You know, I didn’t work this hard to come back even though it didn’t go our way today. You know, just to play only a little bit of it, regardless of how it was going. So, yeah, I wanted to stay in and compete to the final whistle.”
What do you think went wrong with the offense today?
“We just gotta play better.”
But overall, then how did he get better after you were hit 17 times?
“Yeah, we just gotta watch the tape. Once we watch the tape tomorrow, we face our mistakes and we double back and get back to work this week and get ready for Jacksonville.”
How does the amount of hits you took today compare to other times? More, less the same?
“I don’t know. I played a lot of football games so I can’t tell.”
How do you feel compared to other times?
“Like he mentioned earlier, or asked a question earlier, I’ll find out more tomorrow once all the adrenaline and the rush from playing out there kind of wears off.”
When you look back at, you know, the time that some of your guys, some of your wide receivers missed, whether it was not playing in the preseason, how much you think that made contributing to the performance today?
“Yeah, we’re not the type of people that make excuses. So some people can say that can contribute a lot, you know, my injury, guys missing time. But at the end of the day, once you’re on the field, you just gotta, you know, you gotta perform, you gotta execute. And, you know, we didn’t do that overall. And yeah, it showed.”
I asked Kevin this as well, obviously you had this one game as an offense, but looking back at, you know, what you guys did do in the offseason training camp, what gave you confidence that this isn’t a sign of things to come?
“Because it’s 17 more weeks. We got 16, wanna say 16 more opportunities. It’s the NFL, anything can happen. I started 0-4 in 2018. We won eleven straight, you know, so it’s one game at a time. Take it one week at a time. You get ready, regardless if you win or you lose, you gotta scratch that one and get ready for the next week. So anything can happen. Anything is possible. We gotta watch this tape. You know, it wasn’t a pretty day for us. You know, we got to own it as a whole. Especially me as the leader of this team and leader of this offense. Correct those mistakes, get back on the same page and get ready for Jacksonville.”
When you talk about the adrenaline wearing off tomorrow, do you feel like there’s a chance you could have an injury that might keep you out?
“No, I ain’t gonna be out unless I gotta have surgery again. So regardless of what it is, I’m gonna be on that field for sure.”
That big hit at the end, was that the worst one?
“No, none of them really hurt, honestly. You know, it’s football, so you hop back up and make sure you’re not hurt and you just go on to the next play.”
I know it’s hard to separate the two, but how did your shoulder feel? How did the throwing feel coming off of surgery? I know you were hit 17 times, so you might not have the answer to that, but how did it feel during the game?
“It was good, you know, managed to make some throws. You know, just the timing of, you know, certain routes and things like that. We just got to get on the same page. But the shoulder, you know, it got me through the full game, so that was a positive.”
There was a stat in the first half that you didn’t complete a pass that traveled more than five yards. When you look at your passing chart, it’s just a lot of passes that are at the line of scrimmage, behind the line of scrimmage, you know, five yards. Is that by design? Does that kind of maybe counteract the pass rush that could prevent injuries? What do you attribute to just not the aggressive passes down the field and not being able to complete those passes?
“Just the flow of the game. Whatever the play is called, you try to find the open guy and the guy is there and sometimes the rush is getting there, so you gotta dump it off to your checkdown. Yeah, just the flow of the game and how the game is getting called.”
Not only in preseason, but there were a lot of days in practice where you guys were not all out there together, you and your top three receivers. So what kind of effect did that have in today?
“Like Mary Kay (Cabot), I think it was Mary Kay. I think you asked that same question, a similar question. Like I said, there’s no excuses. At the end of the day, I’m not going to sit up here and bore you with just because we didn’t practice for training camp and camp or playing preseason, that that was the reason why we lost. You know, I’m not that type of person. I’m not gonna make excuses to any loss. So, like I said, I’m gonna take the blame and get the guys on the same page and we gotta be better next week. And yeah, so we just gotta go out there and execute. When we’re all on the field together, we’ve got to know the plan and try to, you know, find the weakness in the defense to, you know, find any type of positivity.”
We know how hard you worked to get back. Does this sway your confidence at all, having a performance like this, or do you still have it?
“Hell no. I’ll always be Deshaun Watson, regardless of whoever else say otherwise, you know? So, you know, you gonna have days like this. We all have days like this when you’re playing this type of game, you know, and that’s just part of what comes with it. It comes with the territory. And especially in my position, you know, much is given, much is required. So, you know, you gotta add a little bit more to whatever it is. You know, we didn’t have enough this week, and we gotta make sure we have enough next week to get back on the right page.”
How hard is it, as a leader of this team, going back to your days in Houston, like you said, to lose like that, and then, be a catalyst to kind of bring this team back to where you know you can be?
“You got the 24-hour rule. And that rule, regardless if you win or lose, you’re either celebrating, or you’re thinking about all the mistakes or all the things that could have went your way to get the W. But once you get back in that facility tomorrow at 8:30 a.m., you know, we watch the tape, we have a heart-to-heart to, you know, ‘what went right, what went wrong? What we need to do better? What went bad?’ And then once we watch that tape, we scratch it, put it in the trash, and then we just move forward. And that’s the mentality that we gotta have.”
With the six sacks and the 17 hits, did you feel like those are mostly protection issues or did you feel like you were holding it too long at times? Like, how do you assess that?
“I’m not sure. We’ll figure it out tomorrow, once we watch the tape. You know, I haven’t had time to see the full tape or anything. So at the end of the day, you know, regardless of what it is, that goes for just me and the whole offense, you know? And I’m the one that’s, you know, outside of the center touching the ball that we play, I gotta control that so.”
Deshaun, there was a moment in the locker room where Andrew Berry came over and just kind of gave you a pat on the back and you smiled at him. Not to say exactly what the conversation was but just what was kind of the message that AB gave to you after the game?
“Yeah, I mean…he said ‘Keep your head up, on to the next one’. And again, it’s been a long week. You know, at the end of the day, you know, football is definitely something that you got to take very, very seriously and it’s our job, it’s our career, but you know, there are other things that are bigger than this. I lost my dad Friday. I lost my brother, my teammate yesterday, Diondre Overton, only 26 years old. So, yeah, I mean, it’s been a long week, and they gave me the opportunity to go back home, but I told them I wanted to be here with my guys. So it wasn’t even really about football. It was really just kind of his first time seeing me over the weekend, kind of, you know, let me know he’s here with me.”
I’m sorry to ask about this, but just how hard must it have been to, you know, to lose your dad a day or two before the game, just emotionally? Did that take a lot out of you?
“Yeah, I try my best to just, you know, try at least for at least three hours to separate the two. But again, I’m not going to use that as an excuse for why we played bad. But, yeah, it was definitely a lot of, you know, a heavy heart these last couple of days. But again, like, I don’t want to use that as an excuse of why we lost.”
How about Jameis (Winston)? Seemed like he had a lot of encouraging words and some uplifting messages for you after the game. Can you share some of what he talked to you about? And how nice is it to have a Jameis in moments like that?
“Yeah, I don’t want to share too much because it was very personal. Again, you know, most of the things wasn’t even, you know, of course it was about football a little bit, but most of it was… they knew exactly what I was going through. I think all the guys kind of knew, but I didn’t want to call a distraction to the team, too, you know, of what I was going through. So it was more just kind of that. Letting me know that he was here with me.”
Deshaun what is your thought process on…Did you see pressure coming through and you the decision to scramble? Can you walk us through how you process a blitz of pressure and how you go about making a play after that?
“If I see a blitz early enough, then, you know, flip the protection, try to get the right protection to pick it up. If I don’t, try to play hot. And after that, it’s just reaction. You know, you got to make something happen after that because they got us.”
Deshaun what is the message during the game between you and the offense and even you and the defense as you guys were trying to work out some of those struggles throughout the game?
“Defense… You know, they’re on the field, I’m off the field. But, you know, I can speak on offense, keep grinding, keep going. You never know what play can turn the game around. We thought that we were going to have a lot of opportunities, a lot of self-inflicted opportunities that we had that kind of kept backing us up to kind of get a rhythm. But, yeah, it was really just ‘keep fighting, keep going’ and see what happens. And it wasn’t enough. So we just got to find those ways, not hurt ourselves as a whole and just keep pushing forward.”
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