Stephen A. Smith says Deshaun Watsons is the NFL’s ‘Comeback Player of the Year’

The Cleveland Browns entered the 2026 season with plenty of questions at quarterback, especially after Deshaun Watson missed all of last season while recovering from a twice-ruptured Achilles tendon. But seven weeks into the season, the Browns sit atop the AFC North, and one of ESPN’s most prominent voices thinks Watson deserves some hardware for it.

In a clip shared on Tuesday, Stephen A. Smith declared Watson the current frontrunner for NFL Comeback Player of the Year, though fellow analyst Chris Canty pointed out that it was awkward to say out loud given the quarterback’s off-field history. Smith agreed, calling it “very uncomfortable” before making his case anyway.

Watson’s Surprising Start

Heading into the season, Watson hadn’t taken a regular-season snap since October 2024, when he ruptured his Achilles during a 21-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals that dropped Cleveland to 1-6. He then re-ruptured the same Achilles in January 2025, sidelining him for the entire 2025 season.

Watson also arrived in Cleveland under a cloud of off-the-field issues. The NFL suspended him for 11 games and fined him $5 million in 2022 after two dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct during massage sessions. Watson has continually denied wrongdoing.

All that aside, Watson had not been particularly dominant even when he’s been healthy for the Browns throughout his career, and was even met with boos from the Cleveland crowd during a preseason game.

Despite all of this, first-year head coach Todd Monken named Watson his starter before the season, and the move has paid off so far. Cleveland is 5-2 after Sunday’s 27-24 win over the Tennessee Titans, in which Watson threw for 308 yards, ran for a go-ahead touchdown, and set up Andre Szmyt’s 32-yard field goal as time expired.

Watson has now engineered a game-winning drive in each of the Browns’ five wins. That makes him just the third quarterback since the AFL-NFL merger to do so in each of his team’s first five wins of a season, joining Troy Aikman in 1990 and Matthew Stafford in 2016.

‘Comeback Player of the Year’

While the off-the-field issues are very real, the reality is that he has performed well on the field this season after rebounding from some series injuries. As a result, Smith thinks that he is the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year right now.

“Deshaun Watson right now is the Comeback Player of the Year. Right now, Comeback Player,” Smith said in a clip shared by Awful Announcing.

“That’s uncomfortable to even say. It’s uncomfortable,” Canty said.

“Very uncomfortable to say it, but it’s true. It’s true,” Smith responded. “Five wins, first place in the division. All five wins were come-from-behind victories in the fourth quarter, led by him.”

Technically, Sunday’s game against the Titans was tied when Watson got the ball back with 58 seconds left, but the larger point stands.

“Considering where he was, how bad he looked on the football field, to what he has looked,” Smith added.

Smith also made sure to give Watson’s head coach some credit.

“Him, as far as I’m concerned, [Monken] is one of the top Coach of the Year candidates,” Smith said.

It might be uncomfortable to talk about given his past, but Watson has been playing well.