Browns General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski are no doubt afraid that if this Deshaun Watson situation doesn’t work out, causing the team to drop like a rock in the AFC, they will both be fired.

I can see why they feel that way. I would feel that way, too. When you spend $230 million for something to work, and it doesn’t, then the team owner, in this case Jimmy Haslam, isn’t going to take too kindly to that. 

But even if the Watson situation does continue to sputter, Berry and Stefanski can save their jobs by making prudent decisions about finding a quarterback who will maximize the team’s immense potential, whether it’s Joe Flacco, whom I believe it to be, again, because I saw it happen last year, or somebody else.

The Browns can’t continue to waste time trying to shove a square peg into a round hole if it becomes apparent that Watson is never going to be able to take the Browns where they want to go, and that is the Super Bowl, and to a victory. I don’t care who quarterbacks the Browns, and Berry and Stefanski shouldn’t care, either. Like all of you, I just want this team, to win. If it’s with Deshaun Watson, then great. But if it’s with somebody else, then that’s great, too. 

I hope that Berry and Stefanski keep this in mind, that they are not so stubborn that they are going to continue to try to make it work at the expense of causing the team to fail to live up to its potential.

The quarterback situation is, of course, delicate in all teams at all levels. It’s the most important position in team sports. And it is exacerbated when you spend a king’s ransomfor a quarterback. The pressure is incredible for him to succeed.

But in the end, quarterback is like any other position in football, in that the best player has to play. There is no two-inning rule here, and there is no participation trophies being handed out. The object is to win the game, as the great Herm Edwards so famously said and correctly so. And if one player is better than another, then he plays, whether it’s the quarterback position or strong safety or weak-side linebacker or whatever. That goes for the Browns, and everybody else in football. 

Steve King