Arriving within six months of each other, two stars were called to Cleveland as saviors of the franchise and the final pieces needed for a championship run.
The Cavaliers filled their arena with employees and team personnel in September 2022 to welcome Donovan Mitchell to his introductory press conference. It was a signal both internally and within the NBA that the Cavs were contenders again. But six months earlier, when Deshaun Watson took the stage for an introductory press conference in March, it felt more like an interrogation than a Browns coronation.
Two years later, the Cavaliers and Browns are in very different spaces.
Mitchell is the fuel that has propelled the Cavs to the best record in the NBA. Watson is the fuel for the biggest fat fire in the history of the sport.
Two franchises, two high-stakes gambles. Two drastically different results. The parallels and outcomes between these teams playing their home games just a mile apart provide a fascinating case study in the risks, rewards and consequences of what happens when teams get franchise-altering trades right and when they go horribly wrong.
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Both Mitchell and Watson arrived as stars in the prime of their careers. Now that Mitchell has committed to the Cavs for the foreseeable future with a contract extension and the Browns will spend the next few years picking apart the shrapnel of Watson’s contract, it’s worth looking back and asking: how did the Cavs fare well done? And the Browns are so wrong?
Both franchises emerged from nasty rebuilds believing they were just one piece away. The Cavs reached the Play-In Tournament in 2022, but were eliminated without winning a game. It was a breakthrough of sorts after a four-year rebuild, but the franchise wasn’t ready to commit big money to restricted free agent Collin Sexton. It was fortunate that Mitchell became available when he did.
#Cavs G that Donovan Mitchell was associated with #Tanning QB Deshaun Watson predict. pic.twitter.com/srEWnJA4gO
— Camryn Justice (@camijustice) September 8, 2024
The Browns won a playoff game with Baker Mayfield in 2020. With a year left on his deal, they were hesitant to pay him the $250 million to $300 million contract available to other top quarterbacks at the time.
Mayfield was good, but not great (revisionist history notwithstanding). There were concerns about ripeness. He was extremely polarizing in the locker room. And when the game was on the line, he rarely delivered.
Watson was a three-time Pro Bowler and led the league in passing in 2020. A quarterback of his caliber had not been available in a trade at the prime of his career since Fran Tarkenton in the 1960s. But Watson came with more baggage than Delta: 24 civil lawsuits alleging various forms of sexual misconduct during massages.
The fact that the Cavs and Browns are led by executives like Koby Altman and Andrew Berry, who are close acquaintances, only adds another layer of persuasion to all of this. Each executive agreed to trade three first-round picks in his deal. Altman added key players, including Sexton, and two pick swaps to give the Utah Jazz control of the Cavs’ five drafts from 2025 to 2029. The Watson trade included six draft picks, which the Houston Texans used last year to help win the AFC South and beat the Browns in a playoff game.
Franchise quarterbacks never become available through trades in the prime of their careers. The price to obtain one is worth it, regardless of the cost.
Would a quarterback-starved team desperate to win trade its next five first-round picks for Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes? How about six?
There is no price too high.
Had Mayfield not faced a contract extension, things could have turned out differently for the Browns. An injury to his non-throwing shoulder only exacerbated his terrible 2021 season, but Mayfield also struggled at times when healthy.
Would the Browns be better off with Mayfield than Watson today? Of course, and that’s without the three first-round picks they would have kept. But Mayfield had to be humbled and grow up. There is no way to guarantee that this would have happened here. It only happened because of his poor play in Carolina and the fact that he returned to four teams in two years.
He’s settled in well in Tampa and has found a home for himself – with a $100 million contract, which is still less than half of what the Browns should have promised him at the time.
Do you see the difference?
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One of the most important lessons we can learn is how much character matters in transactions of this size. Mitchell arrived without any lawsuits hanging over his head, without any nasty accusations.
One of the first things he did was reach out to young stars like Darius Garland to say he didn’t arrive with the intention of taking over the locker room. Garland was coming off his first All-Star appearance. This was still his team, Mitchell told him. He was here to fit in and help where he could.
Of course, it didn’t take long for Mitchell to emerge as floor leader. But he didn’t move in on the first day and started rearranging the furniture and repainting the walls. It was an organic integration. He was a model teammate on the court and publicly said exactly what the Cavs needed from him to lead a young roster still trying to figure out how to win.
Yet even the Mitchell trade carried enormous risks. There were constant rumors about New York. Mitchell even admitted on his first press visit that he thought he was going home. During the trade talks, he heard Cleveland floated as a potential destination for about three days, then the whispers died down until the phone call told him to pack his bags.
Well aware of Mitchell’s desire to play in New York, the Cavs traded for him anyway, believing two years was enough time to sell him their franchise and a future in Cleveland. Winning a playoff series last season certainly helped.
Any chance of Mitchell playing for the Knicks disappeared when New York traded for OG Anunoby in late December of last year. When the Cavs flew to Paris for a game against the Brooklyn Nets in January, Mitchell made a decision during the flight to France: He wanted to stay in Cleveland.
There was no WiFi on the flight, no movies to watch. Guys have nothing to do but sit on the plane and talk. Mitchell sat with his teammates, drank wine and laughed for six hours. He realized he had everything he needed in Cleveland. He signed a three-year extension worth $150 million when free agency opened, keeping him tied to Cleveland through the 2026-2027 season with a player option for the 2027-2028 season.
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If Mitchell had refused to sign the extension, the Cavs would have had to trade him last summer. They could have recouped some value, but not nearly as much as what they paid to get him. The crops they owe to Utah would just start transferring and Mitchell wouldn’t even be here. The whole thing could have ended badly. Instead, while the Jazz continue to splash at the bottom of the standings, the Cavs are the clear winners of the trade today.
The Browns, meanwhile, insisted that they did the background work on Watson before trading for him and were comfortable with what they found. Less than three months after the deal, The New York Times reported that Watson had met at least 66 women for massages over a seventeen-month period.
The Browns had already signed him to a $230 million, fully guaranteed contract at that point and were obligated to him. They could never face the scandals even before his on-field play started to deteriorate.
The New York Times report was followed by an HBO special. Watson settled most of the cases against him, while continuing to maintain that he had done nothing wrong. Arbitrator Sue L. Robinson, a retired federal judge, ruled that the NFL met its burden of proving that Watson, based on a preponderance of the evidence, engaged in sexual assault as defined by the NFL. She even noted Watson’s lack of remorse. It was a slow trickle of information that never seemed to end.
Even this year, another woman surfaced claiming Watson forced her to have sex with him. That case was also settled out of court.
Nevertheless, the Browns continued to bow to Watson’s will. He grumbled about scripted plays. He made it clear that he was not comfortable playing under center and that he preferred to ride the shotgun. And when Joe Flacco thrived in the same Kevin Stefanski system that Watson sometimes struggled to contain, the Browns fired offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and broke an offense that didn’t need fixing. They overhauled the offensive staff and rebuilt their scheme to accommodate a quarterback who could no longer play at an elite level.
The Browns will pay for their mistake for at least the next few years. Although Watson still has two years left on his contract, the Browns are still due more than $170 million on their cap hit. From now on, these figures will be stretched over the next three years. If they continue to restructure his deal and spread the money around, the Watson taint could last even longer. Regardless of their exit strategy, this will come with a fair amount of pain.
Watson will likely be on the 53-man roster next year, but he won’t be on the field. One way or another, the Browns will once again have a new starting quarterback.
Cleveland was the first team to cut Watson. Of the four finalists who were willing to overlook his scandals and bring him in anyway, Watson was the least interested in the Browns. But team leaders continued to pursue him.
They finally got their wish. It has become a nightmare.