Deshaun Watson, the league’s 33rd-best quarterback since 2022, will not finish the 2023 season. It will mark his second “incomplete” grade in two years as a Cleveland Brown, the first marred by an 11-game suspension related to more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct and what the NFL itself would later describe as a pattern of “predatory behavior.”
Watson was shut down Wednesday after playing through a shoulder injury the bulk of the year. He leaves behind a 6-3 team that probably wasn’t going far in the playoffs with or without him.
Watson wasn’t very good, even with a full year of Browns experience and Kevin Stefanski’s — the guy who guided Baker Mayfield to a playoff win — guidance. Watson played in six games this season and only had two with a passer rating higher than 75.0 (Zach Wilson’s passer rating in 2023 is 74.6).
He contributed negative expected points added (EPA) in half his outings. The only team he recorded a positive EPA against that currently has a winning record is the Baltimore Ravens and even that came after early struggles. In a crucial game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Kenny Pickett was responsible for nearly negative-10 points of total value and was still twice as useful as Watson.
Now his job will fall to PJ Walker, who has been demonstably worse, or rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson who, ditto. If you stack the three quarterbacks who’ve made at least one start for the Browns against every passer who’s taken at least 40 snaps this season, you get a mediocreWatson and two terrible, horrible, very bad no good options.
There’s a guy on that list not far behind Watson’s 2023 performance. A player with a 99.9 passer rating or better in five games this season and a positive EPA, like Watson, in half his appearances. A guy who knows the Browns playbook because he spent the preseason with Cleveland.
Joshua Dobbs.
The Browns traded Dobbs to the Arizona Cardinals in August and the reaction had nothing to do with Cleveland. At the time, it seemed like a minor swap announcing the Cardinals’ intention to tank the season away by releasing one journeyman backup QB (Colt McCoy) and replacing him with another. But in reality it was a declaration Stefanski was happy to roll with Walker and Thompson-Robinson as his backups rather than the steadier and less exciting Dobbs.
This was a mistake. Dobbs was proven competent but inconsistent with a depleted Cardinals team. He’s been electric in two appearances, both wins, with the Minnesota Vikings after they acquired him for a swap of late Day 3 draft picks following Kirk Cousins’ Achilles tear. He’s been doing so while looking like the kind of guy who could be extremely useful in a Browns offense that’s been buoyed by Watson’s scrambling abilities.
Takeoff 🚀@josh_dobbs1
📺: @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/lWu5Ic3a2z
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) November 12, 2023
Don’t get me wrong. While Dobbs’ revival in Minnesota is wonderful to see, it’s unlikely it will last. Over his seven year career he has yet to prove he can sustain the level of play that would make him a consistent positive presence as a starting quarterback.
But that’s not what the Browns need right now. They have a defense that ranks No. 1 in overall DVOA and has allowed fewer yards than anyone in the league. They have an offensive line that’s kept a running game viable despite the loss of Nick Chubb to injury.
That’s been enough to carry this team to wins vs. the San Francisco 49ers and Indianapolis Colts in games where Walker completed 50 percent of his passes, gained 360 TOTAL yards through the air and threw three interceptions without a single touchdown pass. It’s been enough to go 6-3 despite Watson playing roughly as efficiently as Derek Carr or Jordan Love while being paid a fully guaranteed $46 million annually through 2026.
Cleveland can make it to the playoffs without Watson or Dobbs. But the domino effect of dealing away a journeyman backup in August (along with a seventh round pick) to reap a fifth round selection next spring now means they’ll be turning to two of the league’s worst quarterbacks to start the final eight games of the regular season.
Maybe that doesn’t change the overall trajectory of the Browns’ playoff path, but it certainly sucks all the hope out of the room a bit earlier than expected.
