Although we can’t — and we won’t — forget, let’s put aside the 20-plus accusations of sexual misconduct for the moment. Let’s also put aside the NFL’s investigation, that concluded he engaged in “predatory behavior” that hastened his departure from Houston. Let’s just look at the on-field results. This is what you get.
Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson is bad at this.
That’s not an accounting of his character. It’s not a reflection of his cost on the Browns salary sheet, though that cannot be ignored. It’s purely an understanding of the value he brings to the field each week.
Through eight games, he’s proven to be an overseas, online marketplace knockoff of the real thing. A passable replica with little utility. A “Leaderman” multi-tool where each retractable arm is a corkscrew.
Specifically, Deshaun Watson is the 37th best quarterback in the NFL.
That’s a depiction of every NFL QB who has played at least 200 snaps since 2022, charted by the extremely useful RBSDM.com in terms of expected points added (EPA) per play and completion percentage above expected (CPOE). Watson took the field for eight games after serving a league-mandated suspension for the aforementioned sexual misconduct concerns. With an average per-game EPA of -4.9 points and a CPOE 4.5 points lower than you’d expect from an average NFL quarterback, Watson is, statistically, less impactful and efficient than journeymen including:
- Jacoby Brissett
- Marcus Mariota
- Carson Wentz
- Baker Mayfield
- Taylor Heinicke
- Joe Flacco
The Browns are running out of excuses for this. In 2022, Watson’s inefficient play could be attributed to 28 games worth of rust, the result of a trade request hold-in, league investigations and the eventual discipline that amounted to less than half a game for each sexual misconduct claim he faced. In Week 1 he was part of a wave of poor quarterback play attributed to opening week follies. Week 2 was the moment things were finally going to come together. Cleveland fans would see the savior for which they’d mortgaged their future.
Watson was given multiple opportunities to play hero Monday night. He had a national audience and a comeback story locked and loaded. He was working to overcome the loss of Nick Chubb — the universally liked tailback who’d led the Browns in yards from scrimmage in all five of his seasons as a pro — to a devastating knee injury in the first half. On the other side of the ball was the rival Pittsburgh Steelers, winners of 19 straight regular season games against Cleveland at the former Heinz Field.
Even better, the Steelers had a limp-and-pray offense led by an ineffective Kenny Pickett and a rushing attack that averaged a meager 2.6 yards per carry. All Watson had to do was protect the ball and provide league average passing to rewrite the Browns’ narrative and stake the franchise to its first 2-0 start since 1993.
This proved impossible. Watson’s first pass of the game was a pick-six.
WHAT A START ‼️
📲: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/T87FSnfvVk pic.twitter.com/NkelwMVinj
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 19, 2023
Fine. That’s bad luck. But then came a fourth-and-one fumble in Steelers territory, which squashed a potential scoring drive. This was the first of two fumbles and the less devastating of the two since it didn’t happen while protecting a three-point fourth quarter lead:
OMG 🤯😱
📲: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/T87FSnfvVk pic.twitter.com/vPdJNIMtIr
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 19, 2023
Watson scored one touchdown through the air and gave Pittsburgh two via turnover, turning a game in which his defense held the Steelers to 255 yards into a 26-22 defeat. He needed 46 dropbacks to throw for just 235 yards. His ground game, useful in Week 1’s win over the Cincinnati Bengals, churned out fewer rushing yards (22) than the 25 yards he lost in the course of taking six sacks.
This wasn’t a one-off. In eight games as a Brown, Watson has scored 11 touchdowns (nine passing, two rushing) and turned the ball over nine times. In his last eight games as a Houston Texan — way back in 2020, with a significantly worse supporting cast — he’d racked up 18 touchdowns (16 passing, two rushing) against only five turnovers. It’s difficult to look at the end of his run in Texas and the beginning of a five-year, $230 million contract extension in Cleveland and see anything other than an extremely broken quarterback.
In terms of expected points added, Watson has been 113 points WORSE than he’d been as a Texan — a team with Pro Football Focus’s 23rd-ranked offensive line and a receiving corps in which only Brandin Cooks played more than 11 games. That’s what the Browns, who handed a player who’d missed a full season thanks to a combination of off-field problems that were in a very large way his own fault an unprecedented, fully guaranteed $230 million contract extension, have under contract through 2026.
Attempting to release him will cost the franchise more than $100 million in dead salary cap space in each of the next three seasons before dropping down to a still-excessive $64 million in ’26. A trade makes more financial sense, but Watson has a full no-trade clause. Even if he waived it, what team would be desperate enough to take on the salary ramifications, leadership void and off-field problems attached to a player who is toxic everywhere? This is the Browns’ guy for the foreseeable future, and he sucks.
Several teams bid for the right to mortgage their futures for a Pro Bowl passer with criminal investigations and civil suits not long in his rear view. The Browns won the opportunity to field the NFL’s worst non-Zach Wilson quarterback, all for the cost of six draft picks (three firsts) and a wildly irresponsible, completely unheard of, totally guaranteed extension. They banked on his football skill papering over the awful accusations that chased him out of Houston, effectively trusting half a decade of on-field performances to a player whose off-field exploits suggested he couldn’t be trusted.
Through eight games and a season-plus, that wager looks like a total disaster.
