CLEVELAND — To grasp how the Cleveland Browns spiraled into one of the worst teams in the NFL, it’s important to first return to the end of last season.

The Browns dismantled their offense this year and rebuilt an inferior version in an attempt to appease Deshaun Watson. All of the changes failed miserably. The Browns bottomed out as one of the worst teams in the league and plummeted to a 3-14 finish. They hold the second pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.

For three years, the Browns contorted themselves to match Watson’s strengths and desires. But teammates ultimately grew tired of the organization catering to an ineffective quarterback, and he never really fit in Cleveland. He received at least one death threat.

Now as a second Achilles tear leaves Watson’s career in danger, the Browns can begin the painful process of officially moving on from the worst trade and biggest mistake in franchise history.

How did it get to this? And how did it end so badly? Look to last year.

After Watson’s 2023 season ended prematurely with a broken bone in his shoulder, Joe Flacco joined the Browns in December and resurrected his career by throwing for 300 yards in four consecutive games — something Watson failed to do once in 19 starts with the Browns. It was an embarrassing exposure of the franchise quarterback. The problem was never the scheme.

Flacco’s performance during an 11-6 finish and improbable run to the playoffs earned him the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year and merited another contract to remain in Cleveland as Watson’s backup.

“You have to bring Joe back; somebody has to teach Deshaun the offense,” one member of the organization said as the season neared its conclusion. “Joe picked it up faster in 30 days than Deshaun has in two years.”

It was a stinging indictment of a quarterback the Browns invested three first-round picks and guaranteed $230 million to obtain.

#DawgPound QB Deshaun Watson’s set back in his Achilles rehab has been explained — he suffered another tear and could miss the entire 2025 #NFL season putting Cleveland in position to now select a QB 2nd overall in the upcoming #NFLDraft: pic.twitter.com/mQJgFJz6Tv

— Rich Eisen Show (@RichEisenShow) January 10, 2025

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Coach Kevin Stefanski had shown Watson film clips of his offense during their first meeting in March 2022, demonstrating how Watson could thrive in this wide zone, play-action scheme crafted by Gary Kubiak and Mike Shanahan. But after he arrived in Cleveland, Watson never embraced Stefanski’s system. He wanted to be in shotgun, and Stefanski wanted him under center to make the play-action component more effective.

The Browns tried giving Watson what he wanted. They fired offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt after the 2023 season and brought in Ken Dorsey, who had more experience with mobile quarterbacks like Josh Allen and Cam Newton. Two weeks after Van Pelt was fired, Bill Callahan departed as offensive line coach to join his son Brian’s staff in Tennessee.

I’ve spoken to players who believe Callahan would have stayed had Van Pelt remained on staff — when Brian first started receiving head-coaching interviews in 2023, Bill made clear he was staying in Cleveland — but all of that seemed to change when Van Pelt was fired. Andy Dickerson was hired to replace Callahan. The changes were a disaster.

Dorsey was supposed to deliver the type of offense Watson wanted — one with more choice routes between the quarterback and receivers, more shotgun formations and more freedom. None of it worked, partly because Watson never looked like the same quarterback he was in Houston.

The Browns failed to score 20 points in any Watson start this season. They averaged 4 yards per play with him, the lowest mark in the league for any quarterback who made at least five starts, according to TruMedia. It was the third-lowest output by any Browns quarterback who made at least five starts in a season since the team returned to the league in 1999. Only Charlie Frye and Doug Pederson had worse production.

The line under Dickerson struggled with injuries and protections. Watson was sacked 33 times in his seven starts, although he did little to help himself. He consistently missed getting proper depth in the pocket — when he was supposed to drop 8 yards, he was only getting 6, according to two players with knowledge of the Browns’ offensive schemes. Watson continually ran into his linemen on sacks because he was standing in places they didn’t expect him to be.

Deshaun Watson takes another sack, this one to lose the game on a clutch 4th down pic.twitter.com/q8FsHbyVkk

— Streameast News Network (@StreameastNews) September 29, 2024

What isn’t clear is how much Watson’s struggles can be attributed to the shoulder injury he suffered in 2023. A displaced fracture to the glenoid bone ended his season after six games. It was a common injury among baseball pitchers, but much rarer in quarterbacks, leaving the team with no way of knowing when or whether a full recovery was possible.

At the start of a late August practice, all four Browns quarterbacks went through a standard footwork and accuracy drill that generally ends with each quarterback hearing a color on command from an assistant coach and firing passes toward a net with various colors marked above the targets. But with the early portion of practice open to reporters and cameras, it was odd to see Watson throwing passes to an equipment staffer nearby while the other three quarterbacks tried to hit the net targets.

One rival executive who spoke with Browns officials before the start of the season was concerned about what lay ahead for them.

“Not an ounce of positivity about the offense,” the executive said. “The vibes aren’t exactly high.”

Watson routinely missed open receivers. Passes in the opener against the Dallas Cowboys sailed 5 yards out of bounds. In a September loss to the New York Giants, the Browns ran a slant/out combo route on a run-pass option on a key fourth down late in the game. Tight end Jordan Akins was open in the flat, but Watson didn’t see him and was stopped short of the first down on a keeper. At his weekly media availability three days later, Watson said Akins was “a decoy” on that play and not an intended receiver.

“We all saw the same things,” one player said. “We all watch the film. Guys are open.”

According to multiple players, those mistakes weren’t pointed out in film sessions, frustrating at least a few veterans who believed Stefanski wouldn’t criticize Watson in front of the team. When Jameis Winston replaced Watson after he tore his Achilles in October, players said Stefanski returned to pointing out the quarterback’s mistakes in film sessions.

Off the field, Watson spent the year dealing with traumatic personal matters. His agent, David Mulugheta, received a disturbing email in June from someone threatening to shoot Watson or burn down his house, according to a police report obtained by The Athletic. Police later closed the investigation with no suspects identified.

In the week leading up to the season opener, Watson’s father and a college teammate died within a span of a few days.

“There are other things that are bigger than this,” Watson said. “It’s been a long week … it wasn’t even really about football.”

Watson faced a new civil lawsuit during the season alleging he sexually assaulted a woman in 2020. The suit was quickly settled, and the league closed a brief investigation citing insufficient evidence. That’s how it has gone for Watson in Cleveland. He has settled more than 20 lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct since he arrived from Houston. He served an 11-game suspension and paid a $5 million fine for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

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If this is the end of his Browns career, his three-year tenure in Cleveland will conclude with a 61 percent completion rate, 3,365 passing yards, 19 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and more settled lawsuits than games played. Watson’s EPA (expected points added) per dropback with the Browns was -0.19, according to TruMedia, which ranks 197th out of 201 NFL quarterbacks since 2000 (minimum 15 starts). The only quarterbacks who were worse: Zach Wilson (2021-24 New York Jets), John Skelton (2010-12 Arizona Cardinals), Blaine Gabbert (2011-13 Jacksonville Jaguars) and JaMarcus Russell (2007-09 Raiders). Watson is the only name on that list who wasn’t on a rookie deal.

Players told me there was a constant heaviness surrounding Watson in the locker room and that they felt a different energy in the building upon his departure after his Achilles injury in October. A couple of veterans told me it felt like a cloud had been lifted.

Dorsey and Dickerson were fired the day after the season ended. Former tight ends coach Tommy Rees, promoted to offensive coordinator Tuesday, will likely be tasked with helping Stefanski return to the wide zone, play-action scheme again in 2025. The Browns enter draft season perfectly positioned to select a new quarterback if they choose.

GO DEEPER

Browns promote TE coach Tommy Rees to offensive coordinator: Source

Earlier this month, Bailey Zappe became the 40th quarterback to start a game for the Browns since they returned to the NFL in 1999, a shocking number for a team that has never enjoyed stability at the most important position. Watson was supposed to change all of that. Instead, those within the Browns had privately made clear they were moving on from him even before he reinjured his Achilles. Watson tore it for a second time when he rolled his ankle while in Miami, according to the team, and had a second surgery to repair it last week.

Because Cleveland still owes him in excess of $170 million against its cap sheet, the Browns were expected to carry him on the 2025 roster before the reinjury. At the very least, the second Achilles tear means they could place him on injured reserve so he isn’t consuming a spot on the 53-man roster. In addition, Cleveland can get insurance relief against his salary and a portion of the cap hit on the $92 million still owed to him.

The image of Watson being carted off the field with a towel draped over his head while a smattering of Browns fans cheered is a painful reminder of how messy the Watson era has been. Three years after handing out the richest guaranteed contract in NFL history, the Browns are back in the quarterback market.

— The Athletic’s Zac Jackson and Katie Strang contributed to this report.

(Photo: Nick Cammett / Getty Images)

UFC star Conor McGregor was sued on Tuesday over sexual assault allegations stemming from a bathroom incident at the Kaseya Center during a Miami Heat NBA Finals game in 2023.

The woman, who is described as a 49-year-old senior vice president at a Wall Street financial firm, alleged that McGregor assaulted her in the bathroom in Miami during Game 4 of the NBA Finals on June 9, 2023.

Her lawyer, James Dunn, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

“My client has thought long and hard about the decision to pursue this civil case, and is fearful of the effect it may have on her job on Wall Street,” Dunn said. “Nonetheless, her main goal in filing this suit is to raise awareness and encourage others to report sexual assault.”

Prosecutors said in October 2023 that McGregor would not face criminal charges over the alleged incident.

Barbara Llanes, McGregor’s lawyer, spoke out about the new lawsuit in a statement to Irish Legal News.

FORMER INDIANA BASKETBALL PLAYERS SAY TEAM DOCTOR SEXUALLY ABUSED THEM WITH UNNECESSARY PROSTATE EXAMS

Conor McGregor is seen on the court during a timeout in Game Four of the 2023 NBA Finals between the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat at Kaseya Center on June 9, 2023 in Miami. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

“After a thorough investigation at the time, the State’s Attorney concluded that there was no case to pursue,” she said. “Almost two years and at least three lawyers later the plaintiff has a new false story. We are confident that this case too will be dismissed.”

The lawsuit alleged that staff and security at the arena “had actual knowledge of the wrongfulness of the conduct” and failed to protect her adequately enough. The suit also accuses staff of overserving McGregor despite having a “chargeable knowledge of a heightened risk of battery being carried out.”

McGregor was at the game to promote a pain-relief product. He struck the Heat’s mascot Burnie and attempted to “spray” the character as he was getting taken off the court.

The woman alleged that she was led to a men’s room by a person in McGregor’s entourage, and the assault took place.

Conor McGregor punches Burnie, the Miami Heat mascot, during a break in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against the Denver Nuggets on Friday, June 9, 2023 in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

A Heat spokesperson told The Associated Press that the team does not comment on litigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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I lost nothing. I lost everything.

I am lucky beyond all imagination. I am haunted beyond all reason.

I am spared. Nobody is spared.

I am rounding the sharp turn that enters my leafy Altadena cul-de-sac, my home for the last dozen years, and I am loudly pleading.

“Hail Mary, full of grace …”

It is a Wednesday morning, several hours after the Eaton fire began tearing apart thousands of lives, there are still flames shooting up from burning destruction. On every block, the air is still dark with smoke and the streets are still clogged with trees, but my fiancée, Roxana, and I had just endured a night of sleepless terror. We had to come here. We had to see.

Did we lose this most evil of lotteries? Did we take a direct hit from the hand of hell?

I’m shouting and shaking as the bravely determined Roxana spins the car through flames and foliage onto a scarred and sooted street where we see a bit of fence, and a bit of white, and, then, there it is, standing strong amid the ruins of my beloved neighborhood.

Our house. It survived. It survived?

“The Lord is with thee …”

I begin crying, awash in gratitude and relief, until I look around at the barren smoldering landscape and my heart almost instantly drops into a much deeper emotion.

Guilt.

I was here, but where was everybody else? Where were my neighbors? Where were my friends? Why was I still standing and they were not?

My next-door neighbor lived in a sprawling old house that was always full of life. It was gone, burned to nothing, a portrait of death. How did those flames miss me?

Directly across the street was the tidy home of the kindly elderly professor who lived behind a bevy of beautiful trees. No more. No more beauty. No more privacy. No more house. The bones of her refuge lay crushed and stacked and still flickering with flames. Why was she so cursed when I was so blessed?

Next to her lived a wonderful attorney who never complained when cars from my house were parked in front of her beautifully remodeled home. All gone. Total carnage. Her proud accomplishment had been reduced to rubble. Why did I not lose everything instead?

Times columnist Bill Plaschke stands outside his Altadena home on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. It was one of the few homes in his neighborhood that did not burn down during the wildfires.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

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Of eight houses in my cul-de-sac, four remained standing, three of those absorbed some damage, and mine was the only one that appeared untouched. There was no reason for it. There was no logic behind it. My neighbor Phil Barela said he stayed late the previous night and doused a small fire at the back of our property line, and I’ll credit him forever for saving the structure, but this was surely much more than that.

The fire that surrounded our house on all sides did not consume it. There had to be a reason. What was that reason?

During that frantic Wednesday morning visit, we made a quick dash through the house as flames flickered on the streets below. We were enveloped by the smell of smoke, but everything else felt normal. Everything was just as we left it. Surrounding a brown prickly Christmas tree were old magazines, throw blankets, hurriedly discarded socks, all the trappings of an ordinary life.

A life that, like that of thousands of grateful Angelenos whose houses had survived, had nonetheless changed forever.

Our house will have to be stripped and scrubbed and basically gutted down to the drywall and insulation because of smoke damage, and we were the lucky ones.

We could lose all of our furniture, and we were the lucky ones.

Once we’re allowed to live in the house again, which could be months considering all the water and power issues, we will spend the next two years living in the middle of a construction zone, and we were the lucky ones.

If you hear guilt in those statements, you hear right, a guilt as oppressive as a flame. Why did so many others lose priceless photo albums while we get to keep ours? Why must so many others rebuild their daily steps from scratch while our basic floor plan remains the same?

A couple of years ago I wrote a book about the resilient Paradise High football team, which played a nearly undefeated season months after their town was leveled by the 2018 Camp fire. It was called “Paradise Found,” and its central character was a tough head coach, Rick Prinz, whose house amazingly did not burn down.

I contacted Prinz this week to ask about survivor’s guilt. He said it is real. He said he felt it immediately.

Firefighters try to keep a fire from engulfing an adjacent home during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Jan. 8.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“When we found out our home did not burn it was very emotional, we were so thankful and amazed,” he said. “We also felt guilt at the loss of so many others. We did not share our joy with others and kept it to ourselves. I would try not to mention that our house survived to those who had lost so much.”

Prinz admitted the darkest thoughts wrought by survivors’ guilt — “Yes, there were times when we thought it may have been better if our home had burned,” he said.

But he acknowledged that it was so difficult to get his house working again, his focus turned to that. — “Living in a burn scar, rising insurance costs, constant construction, terrible road conditions … the survivor’s guilt begins to wane,” he said.

That guilt is still going strong here. I will not complain. I cannot complain. I don’t deserve to complain.

Even one minute spent in that house is better than the horrible fate that awaited so many who were never given that time.

From this moment forward, every day in that house will be a monument to pure luck and good wind and Phil Barela and, certainly, I had nothing to do with any of it, and how do I live up to that?

There are many of us in Los Angeles in similar situations, houses intact but lives uprooted, forced nomads who may never get home until spring, folks facing a road so long and complicated surely some of them, like Prinz, may already wish their homes were instead destroyed so they could have just started the rebuild from scratch.

You know who you are, those of you whose homes were saved as their guilt threatens to destroy them. You know who you are, and so seemingly does everybody else.

At one of the recent hotels that we’ve been surfing while waiting to be allowed back home, I was approached by someone walking a big dog down a narrow hotel hallway, a common sight these days.

“Good morning, are you an evacuee?” she asked brightly.

“I am,” I said.

“I lost everything,” she said.

“I did not,” I said.

End of conversation. She abruptly spun and headed in the other direction. I was a pariah. I was not worthy of discussing a loss that could not be quantified. I wasn’t a true survivor.

Gusts send burning embers into the air, fueling the Eaton fire on Jan. 8 in Altadena.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

It was then that I realized, no, we’re all survivors, we’ve all been touched even if we still live in pristine neighborhoods with power and water and life. We were all burned. We will all be scarred.

Just because your house is standing doesn’t mean you are standing with it.

At the moment, I’m trying to stand, but I’m not quite there yet. I am blessed but hobbled. I have learned in the past few days that intangible losses, while no match for the tangible ones, can nonetheless stick deeply in the throat. Those of us with intact houses in burned areas can’t publicly admit it, nor should we, but it’s true.

I’m a creature of habit, a slave to routine, I begged for the same press box seat during the Dodgers postseason run, I drive the same weird route to USC football games, I wear the same basic black uniform to every game of every sport.

And now, even though my house is there, everything else is gone, my traditions, my habits, my normalcy.

I used to drive down a pretty Altadena street toward work. That street is now one long junkyard. I used to stop at a corner Chevron Station every day to buy snacks and talk Lakers with the owner. That place has become a blackened shell.

My favorite hamburger joint, gone. One of my favorite breakfast places, gone. A dive bar that helped keep the neighborhood together, gone. Pizza joint, gone. The hardware store that just sold me air filters last week, gone.

From Altadena to Pacific Palisades, you all have stories like this. You lost your favorite watering hole, your favorite grocery store, a part of your city that had become your anchor, your strength, your best friend. All of Los Angeles has stories like this. Our daily lives have been mangled beyond recognition. There have been deaths, there has been destruction, everybody, everywhere, nobody is keeping score, it’s all bad and it all requires a resilience that was on full powerful display everywhere last week, including in my little burned-out block.

During the brief visit to our house the day after the fire, my neighbor Brian Pires was standing in the middle of the street waxing in amazement that his house had also survived when flames shot up from his corner lot. It was his garage. It was suddenly on fire. He had no water, no hose, no chance, yet he refused to give up. He jumped in his car and raced back to the main road and returned moments later with two firetrucks in tow. He had somehow found the firemen himself and led them to the flames which they quickly doused.

At that moment, he wasn’t just a chiropractor protecting his home, he was all of Los Angeles fighting to breathe again with an unreal courage that transcends all tragedy.

Many of us may never get over the guilt of having a house that is still standing. But, damn it, we owe it to those who lost everything to keep them standing.