CLEVELAND (AP) — Even though Deshaun Watson has been cleared from the concussion protocol, it isn’t certain he'll be the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback for this week’s game against his former team, the Houston Texans.
Coach Todd Monken said on Monday that he wasn’t ready to name a quarterback since he still wants to evaluate Sunday’s 23-22 overtime loss to the New Orleans Saints with the offensive coaching staff.
Shedeur Sanders was solid in his first start of the season, completing 19 of 31 passes for 297 yards and two touchdowns.
“It’s week to week. A player doesn’t lose or win a job ... I don’t know what that means. Each week we put the best players on the field that give us a chance to win,” said Monken when he was asked if he believes a player can lose their starting job due to injury.
Monken also didn’t set a timeline for when he would tap either Watson or Sanders as this week’s starter. Sanders’ late-game performance showed Monken that the second-year quarterback and son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders is showing signs of development.
“There were moments at the end of the game where he made plays," Monken said. "He got it in the players’ hands and did a really good job. He was in command. So, I was really pleased for him and I was hopeful he played well. I thought he had a great week of practice, and there is no guarantee that that will carry over.
“It gives me more and more confidence in what I saw in the fall, that there’s something to build on, for sure.”
Monken decided to go for the win after Harold Fannin Jr.‘s 39-yard touchdown in overtime, but Sanders was pressured on the 2-point conversion and couldn’t complete his pass to Denzel Boston after rolling right. Even if Boston would have caught it, the play would have been nullified because right tackle Tytus Howard was called for holding.
Monken said Sanders didn’t have a chance to complete a quick throw.
“They did a good job with their corners of disrupting us at the line of scrimmage,” Monken said. “We didn’t get to the spots we needed to get to, so could’ve even sat in there a little bit, of course, but we got disrupted and that threw us off a little bit.”
After only three home games in the first nine weeks, the Browns are home for five weeks, including their bye week, and don’t hit the road again until Dec. 19 against the New York Giants. Even though there is some disappointment at being 5-4 after consecutive losses for the first time this season, Monken tried to stress the positives to his players after the close loss in New Orleans.
“We’ve earned being 5-4," he said. "We’re right there in the mix. I do believe our best football is ahead of us, and I wanted our guys to know that we made it through a pretty damn hard grind of having six of your first nine on the road. We’re 3-0 at home. Guess what? We have the next four at home and a bye week.
"It’s all right there in front of us. It really is.”
Sanders was 3 of 5 for 154 yards and a touchdown on downfield attempts (throws of 10 air yards or more). All five attempts happened after halftime.
The Browns have allowed opponents to score on the opening possession in all but one game this season. The 41 points allowed on first drives are tied with Miami for the worst in the league. Five of those drives ended in touchdowns, while the Saints were the third team to score on a field goal.
Boston and KC Concepcion became the first rookie wide receiver duo to both have at least 85 yards receiving in the same game since Amari Cooper and Seth Roberts did it for the Oakland Raiders in 2015. Boston had six catches for 98 yards and Concepcion added four receptions for 85 yards and his first touchdown.
Safety Grant Delpit had a rough day in his hometown, allowing five receptions for 41 yards. He got caught flat-footed on Juwan Johnson’s 15-yard touchdown in overtime.
The Browns left New Orleans without any significant injuries.
7 — Consecutive field goals made by Andre Szmyt of 50 yards or more.
Cleveland will host Houston on Sunday. Watson made his Browns debut against the Texans in 2022, completing 12 of 22 passes for 131 yards in a 27-14 victory.
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Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) is tripped up by New Orleans Saints defensive end Carl Granderson, right, in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken in the second half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ella Hall)
Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) passes in the second half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
College football will expand its playoff to 24 teams beginning next year in a move that resets decades of tradition surrounding a once all-important regular season and dumps conference championship showdowns that used to be among the sport's marquee events.
The announcement from the College Football Playoff and ESPN on Monday made official a deal that's been in the works for months. The network reported it would pay an additional $1.7 billion over five years on top of the original $7.8 billion contract that runs through the 2031 season.
The new format will grant the Power Four conference champions automatic spots and give one more to the best team from the Group of Six. But that slot and the other 19 will be decided by a selection committee that will serve as the latest set of decision makers in college football's long history of polls and opinions having lasting impacts on teams' fates.
Beginning next year, around 30% of college football's 68 power-conference schools will have a chance to play for the title, drawing the CFP closer to the NFL, which allows 43% of its teams into the playoffs. It leaves behind the last vestiges of yesteryear, when between four and eight teams entered December with a legitimate shot to win it all.
It's a seismic shift that even ESPN conceded comes with some question marks. The network pays billions to televise regular-season games that might — or might not — have more meaning under the new system.
“In all honesty, it's impossible to know for sure,” ESPN senior vice president Nick Dawson said in a conference call.
The revenue generated from the playoff expansion will presumably make up for the estimated $345 million the Power Four conferences generated in TV money for their title games. ESPN would then not be on the hook for $140 million of the extra money due to cancellation of the title games, the network reported.
The top eight seeds will receive first-round byes in the new format and the playoff will start on the second weekend in December, with the first two rounds of games on campus. The traditional Army-Navy game will be played on the first weekend in December, which used to be reserved for conference title games.
Both the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences, whose approval was needed to adopt this change, and their Power Four brethren — the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference — are banking that most of the additional spots will go to their members so their second-tier teams will have new motivation to keep spending big in an era of NIL payments and $50 million football rosters.
“I think it will be healthy for teams like our current situation, building to try to get to that point,” said coach Barry Odom, who is trying to rebuild at Purdue.
The first final for the 24-team playoff remains set for Jan. 24, 2028, in New Orleans. Traditional bowl games will still host the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds.
As for the rest of the bowls, most of them operated or televised by ESPN: “No decisions have been made at this time,” Dawson said.
As part of the expansion, the CFP is requiring Power Four teams to play at least 10 regular-season games against conference foes, other Power Four opponents and Notre Dame. Group of Six teams will have to play 10 games against conference opponents.
In theory, these requirements will keep everyone in the same ballpark when it comes to strength of schedule, which figures to play a huge role in the selection committee's considerations.
Notre Dame didn't receive any guarantees, the way it did this year when, if it’s ranked in the top 12 by the CFP for what will be the last year of the 12-team postseason, it will get a spot.
Coach Marcus Freeman said he looks at the change as a net positive, in part because a team like his can now presumably afford more than one loss, and in part because of the new scheduling requirements. Notre Dame is one of only two independents left in major college football.
“I don’t want this to be like March Madness and have 60-something teams making the playoff,” he said. “But the more opportunities we have to make the playoff, it helps us.”
The new schedule also guarantees two off weeks during a regular season that will begin the week before Labor Day.
The move to 24 teams marks the second expansion of the playoff since it began in 2014 as a four-team affair. Right after it moved to 12 in 2024, most thought it would eventually max out at 16, which was the SEC’s preference.
But the Big Ten wanted to go bigger, while the SEC balked at that, concerned about the league title game — a property it invented in 1992 and made billions from over the decades — along with the marketability of CFP games featuring third- and fourth-place finishers in power conferences.
ESPN took care of the money problem. Now, the question is whether fans will embrace an NFL-style free-for-all that could include about one-third of the Power Four’s 68 teams, depending on what happens with Group of Six schools whose role in these big-money power grabs seems to diminish with every move.
It's the latest change for a sport that, for decades, built its distinct character and generated controversy by leaning on media and coaching polls to hand out national titles.
Like then, critics see a risk in giving more power to a selection committee that hasn’t really mastered four- or 12-team brackets. The exclusion of Florida State in 2023 and Notre Dame last season stand out as the best examples, and the first rankings this season left people scratching their heads again.
Skeptics also view the expanded playoff as another dilution of what is largely seen as one of the most important regular seasons in sports, replacing potential matchups between, say, Alabama and Georgia in an SEC title game with a 13 seed vs. 20 seed game that would pit, say, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Fan reaction “certainly weighed into the decision,” Dawson said.
“Ultimately, we just need to make a spectacular playoff,” he said. “The CFP has a responsibility to our fans, they're the lifeblood of college football. We owe them to make this great. That really is our intent.”
As Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti argued from the beginning, a postseason that gives bubble teams hope and keeps others vying for home-field advantage or byes will bring more eyes — not fewer — to the end of a regular season that sometimes boils down to only three or four traditional rivalry games with meaning.
Of course, nobody can be certain how things will play out. The only sure thing is that college football will never look quite the same.
“If they think it’s a good thing for college football, then I’ve got to believe that this is the route we’re headed,” Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell said, “and we’re going to make it a great thing for college football.”
This story has been corrected to show the Purdue coach's name is Barry Odom.
AP Sports Writers Mike Marot, Steve Megargee, Will Graves, Aaron Beard, Brett Martel and Jim Vertuno contributed to this report.
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UCLA defenders tackle Nevada wide receiver Perrion Williams, center bottom, during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)
Georgia linebacker Chris Cole (9) scores a touchdown during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Florida, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Colin Hubbard)
Fans storm the field after an NCAA college football game between Southern California and Ohio State, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
