“Make sure it’s the right guy”: Bill Belichick poked fun at the fact that the Cleveland Browns handed Deshaun Watson a $230 million deal

Deshaun Watson, who had just led the league in passing after his third Pro Bowl season in 2020, was further beset by numerous sexual misconduct allegations during a holdout with the Houston Texans. The Cleveland Browns, despite their better judgment, decided to roll their dice on the quarterback, a lesson Bill Belichick believes other teams should be cautioned from.
Cleveland offered the Texans five picks, including three first-rounders, for QB Watson's services, but the deal is much bigger than the Browns' five-year, fully guaranteed $230 million deal, the largest in NFL history. It wasn't really successful since Watson was suspended for long periods and suffered injuries besides failing to look like the QB he was in 2020.

In an episode of Let’s Go podcast, Bill Belichick discussed the Browns-Watson scandal, cautioning other teams against similar deals and the Browns' decision to offer Watson a deal they didn't need. “Look, these situations, I think, are a lesson to the executives and teams in the National Football League… If you throw a lot of money at a player and it doesn’t work out, you could be sitting there looking at 50-60-70 million dollars of dead money on your cap and make it hard to be competitive.”
“That’s 20-30 percent of your cap, that’s a lot, that’s a lot of good football players that you can’t otherwise have on your team. Before you give out those monstrous contracts, you gotta make sure it’s the right guy,” the former head coach added.
Belichick is correct that quarterback Watson has started only 19 games for Cleveland in the four years since the trade, ranking 5th-worst in passer rating, 3rd-worst in completion percentage and 2nd-worst in yards per attempt. His cap hit this year is just over 10% of Cleveland's cap, but in 2025 and 2026, it rises to 27 percent (about $72 million). The Browns, Denver Broncos, and Cowboys have also fallen into this trap, with failed experiments like Russell Wilson and Daniel Jones.
Belichick feels that the Dallas Cowboys have a similar challenge in a contract involving quarterback Dak Prescott. For that $240 million contract signed with Prescott, who became the highest-paid player in NFL history, things may take a turn. Now, 3-7, with Prescott on injured reserve, what was envisioned with Prescott winning them Super Bowls is fast turning out to be a Watson affair. “There’s always the injury risk if something were to happen, take a player like Prescott… who’s a very highly-compensated player who’s not going to play the rest of the season. It’s a big loss to the team when you have so much invested in those guys.”
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The Cowboys are going to expense this season and start over next year with Prescott and a new coach in 2025, and the Browns will have to start over. Watson and Prescott are making the same kind of money, but Prescott has been the better player for the last four years, finishing second in MVP votes last year. The Cowboys are going to expense this season.