NFL Open Thread: Going down with DeShaun edition

This afternoon I will be attending my first live NFL game since Dan Marino’s last playoff win. DeShaun Watson will not be starting, which is too bad because 1)I will lose the opportunity to cheer against him in person and 2)P.J. Walker is probably an improvement at this point:

Now let’s look at the even bigger picture, two levels out, viewed against the backdrop of Watson’s play in Cleveland since he returned from an 11-game suspension last season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy. In short, Watson has not been good. The Browns are getting by on a top-five defense and their run game, even after losing star running back Nick Chubb to a knee injury, while Watson ranks last among 32 qualified passers in expected points added per dropback, 27th in success rate, and second to last among starting quarterbacks, ahead of only Green Bay’s Jordan Love, in completion percentage over expectation.

In the nine-game sample size of his Cleveland tenure before Sunday’s brief appearance against the Colts, he’s averaged just 198 passing yards per game, completed 60.3 percent of his passes, and thrown touchdowns on 4 percent of them and interceptions on 2.6 percent. His yards per pass attempt is 6.5. All those figures are markedly worse than how he played in his 53 games as the Houston Texans starter, certainly far below what the Browns were hoping he’d replicate when they traded five draft picks, including three first-rounders, and paid $230 million guaranteed for him in 2022.

He may get better, but who Watson is today is a quarterback of average accuracy who is jittery in the pocket and often seems to be sensing pressure that isn’t there. Ironically, the player he probably resembles most is Baker Mayfield, the guy the Browns were so eager to replace, and even there, Watson’s lacking in the stats. Maybe it’s because he’s hurt (though Watson was also this player in his six starts last season), but it’s unclear whether Watson gives the Browns the best chance to win games right now, which makes the mixed messaging around his injury all the more conspicuous.

There is a picture three levels out, too, and it’s one I think you’re probably familiar with. Watson is a franchise quarterback on a huge contract with a nagging injury who’s not playing well, which would be a tricky situation for any NFL team. But he’s not any quarterback on a huge contract with a nagging injury who’s not playing well. He is a franchise quarterback who was sued by more than 20 women who said Watson committed sexual misconduct during massage therapy appointments, behavior that the NFL investigated and called “egregious” and “predatory.”

Any on-field struggles or lack of production weighs on the Browns to a unique degree because of how they’ve bound themselves to Watson in their absurd defenses of his character, the unprecedented fully guaranteed contract they gave him, and the way they structured it to protect him from financial penalty during his 2022 suspension. The Browns bet the franchise on Watson, sold their souls, and gave up whatever pitying affection their eternal organizational hopelessness has earned them to tie their future to this quarterback. Now he’s hurt, he’s playing like B-minus Baker, and no one in Cleveland can provide a straight answer about what exactly is going on.

Really have to admire the devil for refusing to fulfill his side of the contract on this one. If a lifetime suspension would have been the most just outcome for his football career, ritual humiliation while ensuring he has enough money to make full payment on all of his civil settlements and imposing a hard team success ceiling on the amoral hacks who gave up a massive amount of draft capital and cap space to acquire him isn’t a bad runner-up.