Tag: bryce young

Is Watson The Reason For The Browns’ Success? We Say Not Really

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.

Do You Trust Anyone In Berea?

The NFL Draft is about a month away and as usual Browns’ fans are both excited and showing their undying loyalty. It’s the tanking crowd, and one radio talk show host even recently said it is becoming irresponsible for the Browns not to trade Myles Garrett because he’s making the Browns too good to get one of the top three picks in the draft.

First of all, if you trade Garrett for say four first round picks, the odds of one of those players being even close to Garrett as a player is slim. The two-time defensive player of the year is headed to Canton when his playing days are over. And since 1999, the Browns have drafted two such players.

The Browns believe and have sold their fan base on the idea that there is one way to build a winning football team. Be bad enough to get a very high draft pick, let’s say top five, and draft a franchise quarterback. It seems like that is their only plan. They are always talking about “kicking the can down the road” until the following year to see if that can happen.

Apparently, that’s how other NFL teams have done it.

Oh, no they don’t.

The current NFL champion Seattle Seahawks worst season since 2010 has been a 7-10 record in 2021. The previous champ, the Eagles, have had two four win seasons in that same time span, but after their most recent poor season, they drafted a wide receiver in the first round.

Kansas City, who has won three Super Bowls since 2019, had one terrible season since 2010, a 2-14 record in ’12, following which they drafted Eric Fisher, an offensive tackle with their first selection in the next draft.

To be fair, the Rams won in ’21 and kind of did get their QB that way. Following a 4-12 season in 2016, the drafted Jared Goff with the first overall pick, and traded him for Matthew Stafford, a former first overall pick, who led them to their Super Bowl triumph.

So surely, getting a quarterback with a top three pick guarantees success. Three of the four QBs taken first overall did make the playoffs last season (Caleb Williams, Bryce Young, and Trevor Lawrence).

On the other hand, here are quarterbacks taken in the top three from 2020 to 2024: Joe Burrow, Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Young, C.J. Stroud, Williams, Jaden Daniels, and Drake Maye.

Of those nine passers, four of them are hits, two would be considered huge mistakes, and the others it is too soon to tell. But the way the Browns’ front office talks, it would be a 100% thing and it simply is not.

Add in the Browns’ factor.

They did tank 10 years ago and did get the first overall pick in Baker Mayfield, who at the very least can be considered a serviceable NFL passer. And then they screwed it up.

They either didn’t put a good support system around him which didn’t force him to mature, or they allowed him to play hurt and/or the coaching staff or front office soured on him, and they were distracted by the shiny keys that is Deshaun Watson.

Either way, they mortgaged the future to make the ill-fated Watson deal.

We guess this is just our way of saying we don’t trust anything that comes out of 76 Lou Groza Boulevard and neither should the fans or media.

The reality is that group doesn’t know how to build a winning football team. They are just throwing crap at a wall and seeing if it will stick. Unfortunately, that’s what Cleveland football fans have gotten. Crap.