Browns’ Deshaun Watson having issues with former star Ryan Clark over….

The 2023 Cleveland Browns got a taste of the playoffs as a Wild Card team. As general manager Andrew Berry emphasized at his end of the season press conference though, winning the division and hosting a playoff game remains one of the organizations main goals.

While quarterback Deshaun Watson works his way back from shoulder surgery hoping to help that cause in 2024, he’s looking for any advice he can get to make that goal a reality.

In the latest episode of the QB Unplugged Podcast that Watson co-hosts with his personal coach Quincy Avery, retired Steelers safety turned ESPN analyst, Ryan Clark joined the duo and Watson sought some advice from the Super Bowl Champion on what it takes to win the AFC North.

“It’s a very different a very different division than it was when I play, obviously,” Clark said. But I think the one thing that always stands there, it’s tough. Right?

“…I think you learn that like, if you don’t fight through injury, that game and play it so the fourth and play well, you don’t win. There’s going to be physicality involved. In that division. You think about every has great rushers. Like that’s what the AFC North was built on whether it’s Myles [Garrett], T.J. [Watt], Trey Hendrickson, [Justin] Madubuike. The rushers all all over the place.”

Clark is right, the AFC North has a reputation for being a physical division. Rugged defense and running the football are the staple characteristics of what many who have donned Browns, Steelers, Ravens or Bengals jerseys would dub “AFC North football.”

The Browns QB showed he could handle the physical grind this past season while playing through the gauntlet of division foes. In what wound up being Watson’s final game of the season he led a 14-point comeback against the Ravens – going 14-for-14 for 134 yards and a touchdown in the second half – to earn a 33-31 win. Two days later, it was revealed he had played most of the game with a fractured glenoid in his throwing shoulder. His season was over, but Watson’s toughness was on full display.

There is one major difference in the outlook of the teams in the AFC North now though, from when Clark played.

“The difference is now is the quarterbacks are really good,” he said. “I think that’s why you struggle if you’re a Pittsburgh because, you have to, like you go draft Kenny [Pickett], Kenny has to play at a higher level because you’re going to play Lamar [Jackson], Joe [Burrow] and Deshaun twice a year. It wasn’t it wasn’t that when I played. We had Ben [Roethlisberger], Ben was the best quarterback in the division for a long time. You know, then Joe [Flacco] came, played against Carson [Palmer] and Andy [Dalton] for a little bit. Cleveland was a revolving door of terrible people.”