Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson fell a spot on NFL Network’s Top 100 list.Watson, who led the Texans to an 11-5 mark, their first double-digit win season since 2012, dropped from No. 50 in 2018 to No. 51 in 2019.
Watson set the league on fire as a rookie before tearing his ACL. He didn’t match his absurd 9.3 touchdown percentage from those first seven games as a rookie, but 2018 was anything but a sophomore slump. He started all 16 games despite playing through broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. The dude took a 12-hour bus ride from Houston to Jacksonville before their Week 7 game and led the Texans to a 20-7 win. Houston won the AFC South for the third time in four years, but got bounced in the Wild Card Round by division-rival Indianapolis. Another year of health after the ACL tear and Watson could arise as a perennial Pro Bowler.
The former 2017 first-round pick set the Texans’ single-season passer rating record at 103.1, but somehow he dropped a spot. Maybe he didn’t suffer enough riding the bus to Jacksonville, or maybe all of the 62 sacks he took, a league-high, really were his fault.
Some of it could be due to the recency bias of what happened to the Texans in the 2019 AFC wild-card bout with the Indianapolis Colts. For the first time since high school, Watson lost a game he started by more than one-score. Like the rest of the Texans, save for rookie slot receiver Keke Coutee, he was flat. Even though it was the Saturday afternoon time slot during wild-card weekend, it was nonetheless a national stage and the former Clemson Tiger just didn’t shine.
The efficacy of these lists is partially why they are released in the first place. By dropping Watson a spot, it generates discussion. Ultimately, as long as Watson is leading Houston to the playoffs and beyond, no one will care where active NFL players purportedly ranked him in July.
