The late great John Madden used to say that “winning is the greatest deodorant”, but the AFC North leading Cleveland Browns might be considered an exception.
Even standing at 4-2 and owning the first two tie-breakers over the Ravens courtesy of their Week 6 victory at Huntington Field on Sunday, 13-10, Deshaun Watson has been stinking it up at the quarterback position.
Against Baltimore, Cleveland had all of 11 passing yards at the halfway mark, at which point Watson had completed just 3 out of 9 pass attempts, and had been sacked three times. At halftime, Baltimore was leading 10-0, and over the course of the following two quarters did everything in their power to end up with the “L”, but that doesn’t erase just how awful Watson was playing up to that point.
In the third quarter, Watson went 5 for 5 for 46 yards before finding a little rhythm late with an 8 for 12 fourth quarter for 94 yards, bringing his final stat line of 16 for 26 for 164 underwhelming but at the same time deceiving yards against the Ravens, while also getting sacked two more times over the final half. His QBR for the game was a miserable 22.8.
The Browns have been winning despite a subpar performance by Watson all season long. Yes, he’s been able to engineer four game winning drives so far, but the fact remains that Cleveland’s offense has barely resembled a professional outfit throughout most of the team’s six games to date.
And while there are several issues on offense that don’t depend on Watson -- like the team’s still struggling ground game -- the quarterback is literally putting the Browns behind the 8-ball. Before today’s game against the Ravens, Watson had been sacked a league-leading 19 times, most of them his responsibility.
Out of those 19 sacks, eight had come on first down, and 13 of them with 10 or more yards to go, including three on third and 10+ to go. Among today’s five sacks, one came on first and 10, another on second and 10, and the other three on third down, including a third and 14 to go.
Another interesting split is that before today’s game, he was completing just 47.2 percent of his throws on third down. Facing Baltimore, he managed to convert three times out of 16 pass attempts on third downs for the game.
Watson entered today’s matchup ranked 26 out of 33 qualified passers in Total QBR, while the Browns are currently third in the league with 31 punts so far, including all five first half drives against the Ravens today.
Why Deshaun Watson’s performance is deeply concerning
A win is a win, there’s no denying that, and any Cleveland Brown will appreciate it. But the current trend of winning despite Watson is unsustainable.
To make matters worse, there is no Plan-B ready to go for the Browns.
Cleveland went all in with Watson when the team decided back in preseason that they were sticking with the 31 year-old veteran as the starter after not playing an official game in almost two years. After all that has transpired since second-year passer Shedeur Sanders led the team to three victories over the second half of last season, including the firing of Kevin Stefanski as head coach and the hiring of Todd Monken to replace him, and a quarterback battle between Sanders and Watson that nobody expected -- while leaving fellow second-year passer Dillon Gabriel on the sideline -- only to hand Watson the starting gig, the only way to sit Watson now is to do it in a definitive manner.
The Browns have been overselling Watson so hard throughout the last few months, that Cleveland can’t bench him unless it’s for good, and that won’t happen while the victories, no matter how narrow, keep coming.
On one hand, Watson has at least shown enough resiliency to bring those four wins home. On the other, the Browns don’t seem to have a plan anymore for Sanders -- nor Gabriel, for that matter.
So it’s become Watson or bust for the Browns, and with the team installed in first place of the AFC North, some would say you don’t need to fix something that isn’t broken. However, the team’s offense, especially at the quarterback position, is evidently broken -- just not broken enough for Cleveland to be losing the games that would inch them closer to one of the top quarterback prospects for next year’s draft.
In that sense, winning despite Watson playing so poorly has become Cleveland’s most recent quarterback curse, because if we’re being honest, how long do you expect to continue to win with this caliber of play at the trigger. And if you do continue to win a few more games, are you really entertaining the idea of extending one of the worst contracts in league history, with what Watson has been showing so far?
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