LANDOVER, Md. — It’s the first week of October and the Browns’ season has ended before the Guardians season.
At 1-4, this is it. It feels like it’s already over, long before the leaves change, before the bye week, before a pumpkin is carved, before the NBA season begins and before the Guardians’ baseball fate has been determined.
Even by Browns standards, this is awfully early for an obituary.
Yet here is where they were laid to rest, a lousy team buried 34-13 in a lousy stadium 12 miles outside of the nation’s capital.
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There are fires everywhere and not enough hoses to go around. The defense is a mess. The offense is completely broken, void of any identity and any concept of how to move the ball effectively in this new scheme that the personnel doesn’t fit.
The Browns couldn’t even get lined up properly on either side of the ball, a first-degree coaching felony. They were flagged twice on defense for too many players on the field on the same drive, and the offense couldn’t go for it on fourth-and-goal from the 2 because they had too many players in the huddle. They had to eat a penalty and instead kick a field goal. That’s coaching.
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They couldn’t protect, particularly on the right side of the offensive line. Dawand Jones has been bad all year at right tackle, and Wyatt Teller picked a bad time on the schedule for a knee injury.
Rookie Zak Zinter might eventually be a very good guard in the NFL, but right now he’s a rookie getting chewed up by a rough stretch of excellent NFC East defensive tackles: the Giants’ Dexter Lawrence, the Commanders’ Daron Payne, and next week is the Eagles’ Jalen Carter.
All of that is important context. It isn’t just one player.
And yet something has to change. They can’t go another three months like this or no one will survive.
It’s time. It’s time to end the Deshaun Watson disaster. That’s the only word to describe every part of this transaction. The trade that brought him to Cleveland was a complete failure, the contract an albatross, a choke hold around a franchise that is losing oxygen.
Let me be clear: Watson isn’t the only problem on this team. But he’s definitely not the solution, either. We have enough evidence now.
Watson was a mess against the Washington Commanders: 15-of-28 for 125 yards and a touchdown. He was sacked seven more times and the offense didn’t convert a third down until the fourth quarter.
Stefanksi NOT happy with Watson.
Kudus to him for covering his mouth…handled it pretty well considering all things pic.twitter.com/1lLZJYokIX
— Chase Daniel (@ChaseDaniel) October 6, 2024
In a league of 32 quarterbacks, he’s 33rd in pass EPA (expected points added) per dropback. He’s 28th in passer rating. He has been sacked a league-leading 26 times, nine more than any other quarterback.
Even when he had time on Sunday, he left clean pockets. Jerry Jeudy dropped a touchdown in the end zone, although the game was already decided at that point. I’m trying to be reasonable while also being realistic.
A franchise quarterback is supposed to help an offense and a team overcome some of these obstacles.
Watson is making it worse.
He isn’t helping this offense. He isn’t helping this football team.
Kevin Stefanski, of course, isn’t ready to have this conversation.
“We’re not changing quarterbacks,” Stefanski said after the game.
Even if he wanted to — how could he not at this point? — ownership wouldn’t allow it. The Haslams are still bailing water and paddling furiously on the S.S. Watson, hell-bent on taking it all the way to the bottom of the sea.
We’re nearly there.
Last year showed what Stefanski’s offense can look like with a legitimate quarterback when Joe Flacco resurrected the team. Rather than using that as a blueprint to show Watson how good Stefanski’s offense can look when executed correctly, they instead executed the offense and the offensive coordinator. They broke something that didn’t need fixing to placate their quarterback.
Now the offense is averaging 3.8 yards per play through five games, according to Stathead, the worst for any NFL offense since 2018. This offense is hovering in the neighborhood of the 1999 expansion Browns (3.65). It’s worse than bad. It’s deplorable.
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It isn’t all Watson’s fault, but he’s the reason they’re stuck running a system that doesn’t fit any of their skill players and one Stefanski is clearly uncomfortable calling. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how the Browns have some of the slowest receivers in the league who struggle at creating separation. That doesn’t mean you can’t win with them, but it clearly means you can’t win with them playing like this.
Watson has become an infection in the franchise with no known cure. They can’t cut him. They can’t trade him. They refuse to bench him and let him cash his checks in anonymity. So they’ll continue running him out there on Sundays while the rest of the body dies.
The fact this all came against Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels was a bit ironic. Daniels plays exactly like the quarterback the Browns thought they were acquiring in Watson. Daniels is poised, he glides away from pressure. He can roll out of the pocket and throw dimes down the field, as he did on a beautiful 66-yard strike to Terry McLaurin in the first quarter.
Daniels has uplifted a desperate franchise. He has covered the sins of a flawed defense. The Commanders have already matched their win total from last year primarily because their quarterback is playing at an elite level. That’s what the good ones can do.
The Browns don’t have a good one. They have an infection. And the body is slowly dying.
(Photo of Deshaun Watson: Timothy Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5823426/2024/10/06/cleveland-browns-deshaun-watson-commanders/
