Deshaun Watson’s Horrible Season

Every player in the NFL is, ultimately, three different things – the player, the person, and the contract. When the Cleveland Browns decided to trade for and extend Deshaun Watson, they were banking on the first factor to overcome concerns with the other two.

Yes, the off-field accusations were heavily problematic. Yes, the unprecedented fully-guaranteed contract removed most of Cleveland’s flexibility to manipulate the salary cap. But that’s OK! Because Deshaun Watson was a great NFL quarterback, on the verge of climbing into the top tier of NFL players. Two top-10 passing DVOA finishes under his belt, plus significant rushing value. A perennial Pro Bowler and the leader in passing yards in his last full season. The Browns hadn’t had a top-10 DVOA quarterback since their return to the league. The 1990s Browns had some one-off years from the likes of Mike Tomczak and Vinny Testaverde, but you have to go back to Bernie Kosar in the 1980s to find the last time the Browns had a good, stable quarterback situation. You can understand why Cleveland took a big swing at the position, whether you liked it or not. They certainly weren’t the only team in the Watson sweepstakes; they were just the team that won.

Less than three years later, Watson has been the least successful quarterback in the NFL. And he’s on pace to shatter all-time records for futility if he remains the starter in Cleveland for much longer.

Watson is clogging up the bottom of nearly every statistical category more advanced than passing attempts and yards, especially the ones that have to do with pushing the ball downfield. Let’s take a brief stroll through StatsHub, shall we?

Watson is essentially tied with Bryce Young for worst yards per attempt among qualified passers, with 4.84 to Young’s 4.81. Both players have a healthy lead over Jacoby Brissett and Bo Nix, and both Young and Brissett are no longer the starting quarterbacks for their teams. Watson will take over first place in this category when Young falls off the qualified leaderboard in a week or two. Watson already has taken over the bottom spot in yards per completion, with a paltry 8.0. That would be the lowest total in NFL history, beating out 2007 Steve McNair at 8.4.

Is Watson just dink-and-dunking? No, his aDOT is a reasonable 7.5. But only 40.8% of his air yards are charted as catchable, fifth lowest in the league. He is second in “prayer yards” – uncatchable air yards — with 786, just behind Caleb Williams Watson has 16 pass attempts that have travelled more than 20 yards in the air; he’s completed just four of them for 98 yards. So while Watson is taking plenty of deep shots, they usually aren’t to spots where receivers happen to be standing.

It doesn’t help when he throws the ball short and lets his receivers do the work, either. While YAC is often scheme dependent and not quarterback dependent, Watson isn’t getting any help there. He’s getting just 2.4 YAC per attempt, which will be worst in the league once Young falls off the leaderboards.

Because of all those short completions with no YAC, Watson has only been successful on 35.8% of his passes, fourth worst in the league behind Young, Nix and Anthony Richardson Watson is playing like a developmental player on a very non-developmental contract.

But it’s not just a question of air yards! While Watson has been a little fortunate in overall turnovers, we have him charted with eight turnover-worthy throws, one behind Kirk Cousins for the most in the league. Watson has been sacked 26 times, which is eight more than anyone else in the league and is on pace to shatter David Carr’s record of 76. Will Levis is sacked slightly more frequently, but Watson’s 12.9% rate is second worst in the league, and his 15.3% adjusted sack rate is dead last.

The Worst Passing DVOA in Cleveland History

It turns out, when you’re not completing deep passes, the passes you are completing aren’t successful, and you’re spending most of the game being slammed into the turf, your advanced stats aren’t that great, either! Watson has the worst DVOA of any qualified quarterback at -57.1%, and his lead is likely to only increase as Young falls short of the qualifying minimums. Watson’s DVOA would be the fifth worst in NFL history, and by far the worst in Cleveland Browns history. Being a percentage stat, it’s more likely than not that Watson’s DVOA will improve over the rest of the season – it’s hard to play this badly, for this long! – but he has a significant lead over the worst quarterback seasons in Browns history. Even if Watson is only half as bad over the remainder of the season, he has a very good chance of taking the bottom spot on the Browns’ wall of shame.

(Yes, all the worst passing seasons for the Browns have been since their return to the league in 1999.)

But as bad as Watson’s DVOA is, that’s not the headline here. We’ve seen other quarterbacks have really bad per-play starts. No, it’s the volume of Watson’s struggles that has him threatening to shatter all-time records.

Watson’s -562 passing DYAR isn’t just last in the league; it’s last in the league by leaps and bounds. No one else is below -200, with Bryce Young (-195) and Will Levis (-191) the closest to him. If anything, that’s soft-playing how bad Watson has been, too, because opponent adjustments aren’t at full strength yet. Watson drops 98 YAR when you add in opponent adjustments at their current 50% strength, more than anyone else in the league. His early season performance is going to look worse and worse unless we see remarkable defensive turnarounds from the likes of Jacksonville and Washington.

Watson Threatens to Have the Worst QB Season Ever

Even as it stands now, Watson’s -562 passing DYAR is the 33rd-lowest in DVOA history, stretching back to 1979. Not the 33rd-lowest through five games or five weeks; 33rd-lowest of all time. This is a counting stat. It takes the truly elite worst-of-the-worst to put up numbers as bad as Watson has. If he somehow starts all 17 games and plays this poorly, his -1,911 projected passing DYAR would nearly double the worst numbers we have ever seen.

We don’t have a convenient database of where every quarterback was through Week 5. Watson’s -562 is below where any of the current bottom 10 were through mid-October, although that’s because David Carr and the Texans had an early bye week in 2002. Carr returned from his bye week and put up three straight average-level performances before beginning to rack up negative DYAR once more; Watson is desperate to do the same. But the Browns don’t get their week off to reboot until November, so help is not on the way.

It’s almost impossible for Watson to keep up this level of poor play. The only players on this list with worse DVOAs than Watson were either struggling rookies, journeymen veteran starting in front of struggling rookies, or midseason injury replacements. And none of them were allowed to throw 300 passes; you can’t be this bad and expect to keep your starting job.

At the moment though, the Browns are ruling that out entirely for Watson. Kevin Stefanski has said that there hasn’t even been a thought or a consideration for sitting Watson down in favor of Jameis Winston Watson himself has said that “the offense will go as far as I go.” To be fair, that’s been true so far, as Cleveland is 32nd in offensive DVOA, but I don’t believe that was his intention.

Is there an argument for keeping Watson in and hoping he’ll get better? If you wanted to justify it, you could construct an argument. Watson has been victimized by a few drops in key situations; only Geno Smith has lost more yards to drops than Watson has. The Cleveland offense also hasn’t been working at full strength – it’s not just Nick Chubb, who is still on IR, but they’ve also seen David Njoku, Jedrick Wills, Jack Conklin and Wyatt Teller miss time. This offense is not healthy, and any quarterback would have some struggles with this lineup at the moment. Watson’s advanced stats are bound to improve a little when he has starting-quality players around him once more.

But it’s not like the Browns have a monopoly on being hurt, or from being forced to rely on subpar talent. I still do not believe Watson is the least talented quarterback starting in the league, but he is clearly and obviously not playing well enough to overcome Cleveland’s other issues. Benching Watson both gives Cleveland a better chance to win right now and probably gives Watson a better chance to succeed down the line – step back, let him recover from the pounding he’s taken over the first month of the season, and try to reset. Watson is not reading the field well. He’s not pulling the trigger on open receivers downfield; he’s anticipating pressure even when there isn’t any. He’s far from the only problem Cleveland has, but it seems like weeks of poor performance have built to the point where he’s scattershot and befuddled even when things are going well.

Do the Browns Have Any Hope?

The Browns’ season is not over! They’ll be in significant trouble if they lose to Philadelphia this week and fall to 1-5, but going 8-4 down the stretch would more than likely be enough to get them into the postseason. The defense hasn’t been as good this year compared to last year, but they’ve been solid despite being put into terrible situations by the offense. If the offense could just be regular, run-of-the-mill bad rather than a disaster, I still believe the Cleveland defense can lead this team to the postseason. But they can’t do that if they’re having all-time worst production from the quarterback spot.

The best thing for the Browns would be to sit Watson down. It doesn’t have to be permanent, and it doesn’t have to be phrased that way. If Jameis Winston comes in and plays well, great, move on from there. If not, you can bring back Watson after a rest to try to straighten things out. But you can’t afford to have Watson continue to look lost behind center and hope things straighten out on their own.

The best thing for us, of course, is more Watson and plenty of it. That’s the reason we ran the whole table of the bottom DYARs of all time, despite its length – it’s something to follow along, week by week, as Watson charges at Josh Rosen and the all-time record. Because if you’re going to be bad, at least be historically bad. The rest of the league and enjoyers of schadenfreude everywhere implore you.