NFL Open Thread: why is DeShaun Watson still starting?
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We’re at Week 7, and as Barnwell observes serial settler of sexual harassment lawsuits DeShaun Watson continues to play at an historically bad level:
To start, he ranks last in the league in Total QBR (21.5). The only player within 15 points of Watson is Will Levis (28.3). QBR has existed since 2007, and among passers who threw 100 pass attempts or more across their team’s first six games, Watson’s season ranks 558th out of 566.
Again, the only quarterback who ranked below Watson who wasn’t also injured, benched or coming off the bench to take over for another passer during that six-game start to his season was Russell. And, like Watson, there’s a strong case that Russell was playing more because Raiders ownership was invested in the idea of its starting quarterback being good than any actual recent evidence.
Total QBR is just one stat. What about EPA? Well, The Ringer’s Austin Gayle helps there: Watson ranks last in cumulative EPA on dropbacks through the first six weeks of any season since 2000.
Going back to those 566 quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts, Watson ranks at or near the bottom of the league in virtually every rate metric. Among them, he is 565th in yards per attempt (5.1), 565th in yards per dropback (3.9) and 566th in first-down rate (22.1%, just behind Bo Nix‘s 22.2%). Watson is better by passer rating because it doesn’t include one major flaw in his game.
The QBs with comparable performances on efficiency metrics include the legends of bad quarterback play: Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, Josh Rosen. And still better than Watson is literally every QB in the very dismal history of the Cleveland Browns 2.0.
It would be revisionist history in the negative sense to claim that Watson was never good, but as Mike Tanier points out in his very entertaining roast of the Browns, the evidence that he was ever a major rather than a minor upgrade over Baker Mayfield pretty much comes down to a season in which he piled up a ton of yardage in garbage time in empty stadiums for a 4-12 team:
My highly unpopular – and therefore probably accurate – Watson take is that he was never actually a great quarterback.
Oh, Watson was very good when he played for the late-2010s Texans. He ranked 10th in the NFL in DYAR (including rushing) in 2018 and 13th in 2019. So he was a top 10 quarterback. Barely. Almost.
Watson’s best statistical season was 2020, when he led the NFL with 4,823 passing yards and 8.9 yards per attempt. Watson finished fifth in DYAR that year. The Texans finished 4-12 amid the implosion of the Bill O’Brien regime. It’s hard to shake the impression that Watson padded his stats at the ends of losing efforts in games no one watched in 2020. In fact, Watson threw 13 fourth-quarter touchdowns that year but was credited with zero fourth-quarter comebacks.
The All-22 filmbro influencers adored Watson in 2020, but when is it ever like them to get swept up in a narrative of their own creation? (Don’t answer that.) Remember: O’Brien was the “bad guy” before we knew what Watson (allegedly) did with his downtime. Watson looked like a victim of circumstance on a dysfunctional team. It’s easy to overrate a quarterback whose stats look great while his coach throws practice-field conniptions and the team’s failson owner is having bible stories read to him from a pop-up book.
NFL owners are the sorts of people who would bid enough money to fund a hospital at an auction for the right to eat the last breeding pair of an endangered species, then slather the roasted dodos in ketchup. Naturally, they were tantalized by Watson once he became forbidden and unattainable. And Haslam, sweaty and desperate to appear cool in front of the owners who don’t wear off-the-rack suits that permanently smell like exhaust fumes, was inevitably the owner who swooped in and overpaid for the contents of the dead cocaine kingpin’s storage shed.
The question then becomes why Kevin Stefanski continues to play a guy who combines the social skills of Mark Halperin with the quarterback play of Nathan Peterman. Let’s say Halsam is demanding that Stefanski keep playing him. If you bench Watson and he fires you…great, you’re a two-time coach of the year, you will get paid and then can easily get a head coaching job with a better organization. (As Tanier says, if there are owners powerful and respected enough to credibly threaten to blackball a coach, Haslam ain’t one of them.) It’s pretty clear that his teammates can’t stand him. I have no idea what he’s waiting for.
…apparently the football gods finally decided to intervene:
#Browns QB Deshaun Watson, who was carted off, is feared to have suffered a torn Achilles injury, sources say. A likely season-ending injury for Watson and unfortunately exactly as it appeared on the field. pic.twitter.com/SWUc4AGmYq— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 20, 2024