BEREA — Deshaun Watson is going to try again to make a comeback.
The Cleveland Browns quarterback is going to start Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, head coach Kevin Stefanski announced Friday afternoon. It will be his second start in three weeks after missing two games with a rotator cuff stain in his right shoulder, although he didn’t make it out of the first quarter the last time he started against the Indianapolis Colts on Oct. 22.
Watson was on the practice field for the third consecutive day on Friday, which marks the most he’s practiced in a week since the days leading up to the Browns’ Week 4 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, the week the rotator cuff strain in his right shoulder first became public. After being limited on Wednesday and Thursday, although he did participate in all of the individual throwing drills those days, Watson was a full participant on Friday.
Watson took all of the first-team reps during the roughly 20 minutes of practice open to the media. That involved some warmup tosses before the rest of the time was spent working in the short red zone.
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Watson did have a few passes which were either short or low. However, he also mixed in a few good ones as well.
That Watson practiced three straight days was a change from what has been the norm over the last month-plus, even from the week leading up to the Ravens game. That week, he didn’t throw on Wednesday and barely threw on Friday, yet the message throughout that week was that he was going to play, right up until he was ruled out nearly three hours prior to kickoff.
Rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson was thrown into the mix for that game, and his first NFL start did not go well in a 28-3 loss. That led the Browns to come out of the subsequent bye week by naming fourth-year pro P.J. Walker, who had been on the practice squad, as Watson’s backup.
Walker started two of the next three games — a Week 6 win over the San Francisco 49ers and this past Sunday’s loss at the Seattle Seahawks — while coming in for essentially the final three quarters of the Week 7 win at the Indianapolis Colts. He helped guide the Browns on go-ahead scoring drives late in the fourth quarter of both the 49ers and Colts games.
Watson tried to come back and play against the Colts after having practiced on the Thursday and Friday prior to the game. He went through a normal pregame warmup routine, but struggled going 1-of-5 passing for 5 yards with an interceptions before being knocked down by Indianapolis defensive Dayo Odeyingbo with 3:13 remaining in the first quarter.
While Watson was cleared of a concussion by the independent neurologist on the sideline, he never returned to the game. After the game, Stefanski said the decision to hold him out was to ‘protect him.’
Watson has completed 66-of-107 passes (61.7%) for 683 yards with 4 touchdowns and 3 interceptions in four games. He was 27-of-33 for 289 yards with 2 touchdowns in the Week 3 win over the Tennessee Titans, the game in which he suffered the injury on a third-quarter hit by Amani Hooker.
