Jerry Jeudy claimed he held up four fingers as a reference to his daughter's age, not teammate and Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson, in a TikTok live stream gone viral.
The veteran wide receiver held up four digits on his hand but said he was not endorsing Watson, who wears No. 4 for Cleveland, as his preferred starter.
Watson and Shedeur Sanders are competing in training camp to be the starting quarterback for the Browns.
Jeudy said he has been in the NFL long enough to know not to answer a question
about his preference at the position on social media.
"I think I'm mature enough and wise enough to not answer questions like that," Jeudy said. "For everyone to believe that I would answer something like that on social media is kind of wild, but you got to understand this where we're in and understand how everybody's viewing the quarterback competition in this room."
There appears to be an obvious edit in the video between the time a question is asked and Jeudy's response. He told media on Wednesday that he cut his daughter out of the video, but not his response to a viewer's question about her age.
"I threw out the four because she's 4 years old," Jeudy said.
Jeudy said he huddled with the Browns, Watson and Sanders to communicate his side of the story because of the amount of attention the video received.
"I don't know what they're thinking in their mind, so I had to just go up there, clear it up to them and know what really happened and not what the media portrayed it to be," Jeudy said.
First-year head coach Todd Monken plans to give Sanders and Watson at least one start in the preseason.
Sanders, a fifth-round pick in 2025, threw a 60-yard TD pass to Jeudy in a 31-29 home loss to the Tennessee Titans last season, but otherwise the duo failed to connect consistently. Sanders had seven touchdown passes and 10 interceptions in 10 games.
Jeudy, the Broncos' first-round pick in 2020, was questioned for social media behavior during his Denver tenure -- abrasively engaging NFL media personalities and defending his team's 1-5 start in 2023 -- and media wondered aloud if then-quarterback Russell Wilson was "ignoring" the receiver.
"Jerry Jeudy has an unbelievable ability to get open," Wilson said in Dec. 2023. "I think he's really special."
--Field Level Media
