Deshaun Watson remains the Cleveland Browns starting quarterback but that comes with an expiration date

The Cleveland Browns are sticking with Deshaun Watson despite the understandable conversation among their fan base and in the media that the quarterback should be benched following a season-opening loss.

"I anticipate that Deshaun will be our starter," coach Todd Monken announced on Monday.

Monken gave his reasons for keeping Watson in the lineup for Sunday's game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But, make no mistake, the patience for continuing this course comes with an expiration date.

And that date is the Week 3 game against the Carolina Panthers.

First the news of the day: Monken, having watched the tape of a 34-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, believes he saw enough from Watson after 693 days of not playing to keep him in the starting role.

"It's only been two weeks he's gotten all the reps," Monken said, referring to the fact the Browns had a starting QB competition in training camp and the practice repetitions were split between Watson and Shedeur Sanders.

"And there were some really good things on film," the coach added, "some things that you can build on.

And there were some others that operationally we got to get better at.

"There's concepts that, you know, there's only so many looks you get from week to week, be it red zone concepts, third down concepts.

And I did think that when he had time, when he understood the concepts, he didn't play tentative, that he let it rip.

"So there was a lot of things to build on.

Wasn't perfect, of course not.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have scored as few points as we did.