With the Cleveland Browns’ 5-2 start and their hold over the Cleveland media, both print and broadcast, we figured we would start seeing and hearing about how good Deshaun Watson has been this season.
Yes, he’s led the Browns to five fourth quarter comebacks this season, the most in the league. Another way to look at it is his play hasn’t been good enough in the first three quarters of most games this season. In a weird way, can you credit someone for a team coming from behind because his play was part of the reason the team was losing in the first place?
We understand that passer rating isn’t the greatest measure of quarterback play, but currently Watson ranks 19th in the league right behind Bryce Young and Tyler Shough, and just ahead of Jordan Love and 43-year-old Aaron Rodgers.
In yards per attempt, a stat a lot of football people look at because guys who “dink and dunk” don’t rank that high, Watson is 17th surrounded by Love and Matthew Stafford (that’s good company) but also Malik Willis and Tyler Huntley.
The point is he’s right in the middle of the pack, nothing horrible, nothing great. Now, that’s better than some of the terrible play at QB the Browns as a franchise has had since returning to the league in 1999, but is it something to sign up for going forward?
Watson played his best game of the season last Sunday, but it was against one of the five worst defenses in the league as the Titans are. Again, we’d rather have him play well vs. a terrible defense than not, but let’s not pretend he carved up the ’85 Bears.
Watson is having his best season since 2020, and while we want to enjoy this present, a 5-2 start, if you look ahead to next year, do you really think he’s going to continue to play at a level he hasn’t played at since the end of the last decade? We would be very leery about that.
Here’s a bad argument. Watson isn’t playing awful and the Browns are 5-2. Does that mean he is the reason for the team’s success? On social media, we equated it to the arguments Cavs’ influencers used about Dean Wade.
They would list the wine and gold’s best performing lineups and they included Wade, so the inference was the lineups were successful because of Wade. The reality is they did well because of the other players in the group, actual solid NBA players. Our argument was how would the squad perform if you replaced Wade with a better player?
For the Browns, who would they be playing if say, Jared Goff or Joe Burrow, or Trevor Lawrence were guiding the offense? Our guess is a lot more points would be scored, and the fourth quarter comebacks wouldn’t be necessary.
We know there will be some who will say we should just enjoy the success. It’s been a while since the Browns sat at 5-2. And our answer (as usual) is yes, we want them to win. We grew up in an era where the Cleveland Browns were a perennial winner.
The issue is stop thinking this team doesn’t need better quarterback play and stop thinking the solution is keeping Deshaun Watson. It should point out to the front office though that you don’t have to tank to get decent QB play.
