“Whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it.” — Proverbs 26:27
“Whoseover diggeth a pit shall lay in it.” — Bob Marley
No NFL quarterback in history has ever been put under the microscope the way Deshaun Watson has through six games this season and it’s not close. Which only makes sense when you consider that no black* NFL quarterback had ever embarrassed his owners worse than Deshaun did in forcing his way out of Houston in 2021.
Case in point, the narrative that’s been flogged in the corporate media over the last two weeks that the Cleveland Browns would be better off if they benched the 29-year-old $230 million-dollar four-time Pro Bowler in favor of 30-year-old Jameis Winston, who was last considered an NFL starter, and only a serviceable one at best, five years ago.
While there are many examples of this—here’s Cleveland’s own Jason Garrett on NBC, Chase Daniel on FOX, Mike Florio and ultra-nepo-baby Chris Simms at Pro Football Talk, Rob Gronkowski at Sports Illustrated, Chris Trapasso at CBS, and Jason Lloyd at the Athletic (the latter of whom has been bizarrely obsessed with cancelling Watson since long before the season started), among other assorted bozos and folks who are supposed to know better—the most ambitious is the front-page piece that ran at ABC/Disney’s ESPN.com on Monday, featuring an extraordinary and extraordinarily lengthy 5,000+ word “analysis” by one of its leading NFL “analysts” Bill Barnwell (whose posts are usually paywalled, but, tellingly, not this one) bearing the headline, “It’s time for the Browns to bench Deshaun Watson: Here’s why.”
Barnwell acknowledges at the outset of this piece that “the Browns might not be a very good team with Jameis Winston at quarterback,” but goes on state that “their offense likely would at least vaguely concern opposing defenses on a week-to-week basis” if Winston were starting.
From this statement one would assume that the other ten positions on the offense were functioning at a high level, and that the Browns had been blown out in every game. But neither of these propositions are remotely true.
Rather, as Barnwell acknowledges, the offensive-line play has been a disaster in the wake of legendary offensive-line coach Bill Callahan’s departure, in no small part due to a rash of injuries that have required eight different linemen to have played at least 50 snaps for Cleveland, including second, third, and fourth-stringers, and rookies, who’ve been obviously overmatched. There have also been issues with play-calling and the installation of a new offensive coordinator and offensive scheme using backup running backs, which Barnwell’s piece doesn’t discuss. Nor is there any mention that the Browns pass-catchers lead the league in drops. And while Barnwell does note that the Browns lead the NFL with 36 offensive penalties through six games (a typical product of an undermanned offensive line), there’s no acknowledgement that two of these penalties dubiously erased game-changing plays by Watson, including a 68-yard touchdown pass to Amari Cooper in Oakland and a run that had the Browns set up with 1st and 10 at Philadelphia’s 12-yard line to take a second-half lead with a touchdown, that likely cost the team wins against the Raiders and the Eagles.
Of course, honest football analysis accounts for the fact that it’s the ultimate team sport and that a quarterback’s play will suffer if his blockers can’t block, his receivers can’t catch, his coaches haven’t installed functional schemes, not to mention if the officials aren’t calling the games fairly, or the fact that scoring has continued declined league-wide for the last six years, another key fact that escapes mention in Barnwell’s piece. Yet all of that has gone out the window for Watson, who’s instead assigned all the blame for his team’s failures based on hindsight-based claims that are entirely subjective and unverifiable, especially without access to the Browns’ playbook. Just take it from Barnwell, who says that he’s “watch[ed the] tape,” and “estimate[s that] at least 10 of [the league-leading 31] sacks [taken by the Browns this season (no other team has taken more than 20)] have more to do with Watson than with everything else around him.”
It would be a wild coincidence for the Browns to have the worst offensive-line play in the league by a mile (nevermind the dropped passes, the play-calling and execution under a newly installed scheme, and the penalties), with the failures of the offense nevertheless not only being mostly the quarterback’s fault, but to such a degree that a chorus of ostensibly credible football analysts would fairly be calling for this QB—who is, again, a 29-year-old $230 million-dollar four-time Pro Bowl QB, who by the way also led his college team at Clemson to a historic championship win over Nick Saban’s Alabama dynasty—to be benched for a backup who hasn’t taken meaningful snaps in five years. But at least one could imagine circumstances where the quarterback’s play would be so obviously poor, independently of the other 10 positions on the field and everything else, that this conclusion would be reasonable and the likes of Barnwell could get away with saying things like “[the Browns’] offense likely would at least vaguely concern opposing defenses on a week-to-week basis” if the backup were starting.
The problem for these “analysts” is that such circumstances not only don’t exist, any suggestion that they do is flatly contradicted by what’s actually happened on the field, where, if anything, the Browns offense would have performed substantially worse with the backup playing in Watson’s place.
In fact, it’s shockingly disingenuous for Barnwell to purport that the Eagles weren’t at least “vaguely concerned” by the Browns’ Watson-led offense last Sunday in Philly, where the All-Pro-laden home team escaped with a 4-point win after Watson completed 10 of his 11 passes and led his team into scoring position on three of four second-half drives. These drives resulted in field goal attempts and not touchdowns for reasons that not even an ESPN “expert” could pretend had anything to do with Watson’s play—namely, penalties, including (again) the especially dubious third-quarter holding call on third-string center Michael Dunn that turned 1st and 10 at the 13 into 3rd and 16 at the 34 that tilted the game in Philly’s favor, and a botched reverse to Cedric Tillman on 3rd and 1 on a play where Watson wasn’t even on the field.
Similarly, the Raiders were surely more than “vaguely concerned” when they beat the Browns by 4 points in Vegas two weeks prior thanks only to (again) the absurd touchdown-erasing holding call on a long Watson touchdown pass to Amari Cooper in a game where Watson received the second-highest grade from Pro Football Focus of any NFL quarterback who played that week.
And of course the Jaguars were beyond “vaguely concerned” when Watson’s Browns beat them on their home field thanks to the quarterback’s play in leading three first-half scoring drives that were the difference in that game. As were the Giants when they needed a 4th quarter Jerome Ford fumble and Cedric Tillman drop to escape Cleveland with a 6-point win. If these games had been officiated fairly — or just take away the two dubious game-changing holding calls late in the Raiders and Eagles games — the Browns would be at least 3 and 3 instead of 1 and 5, and if the ball bounces differently on a play or two against the Giants, 4 and 2 and tied for the lead in the AFC North.
So of course it’s obvious nonsense to suggest, let alone with any certainty, that the Browns would have been or would be any better with Winston having played over Watson in these games or for the rest of this season. Yet not only is this absurd narrative being mercilessly and shamelessly flogged in the national and local press, the talking heads are tying themselves in knots to justify their commitment to it. Thus, we’ve been subject to the equally baseless and absurd talking points that Kevin Stefanski, who’s won two of the last four NFL Coach of the Year awards has a gun to his head, and is somehow being forced to start Watson for some reason other than the obvious one (that he’s the best QB on the roster); or that the rest of the Browns players hate playing with Watson despite that they uniformly praise the QB at every chance they get, confirming the (again obvious) point that Watson’s play is about the least of this team’s many problems.
There’s also the disgraceful pining over mediocre white quarterbacks who used to play for the Browns, including a 40-year-old statue who threw pick-sixes on two consecutive drives to destroy the Browns’ chances in last year’s playoff game, and who no other team in the NFL deemed worthy of a starting position this season. And the usual suspects are also naturally talking about drafting a quarterback in the first round of next year’s draft, as if the Browns wouldn’t be restored to an immediate contender with the return of their injured starters and with a top draft-pick used on a contributor at any other position. Some prominent “influencers” are even going so far as to gleefully promote the shameful spectacle of widespread booing at the Browns return home this Sunday against the Bengals after three weeks on the road, in what will be Nick Chubb’s return from his long and heartbreaking absence from injury.
Which brings us to what some people (mostly not especially bright or grounded people) might call the “elephant in the room.” That being, whatever one thinks about the merits of the infamous sexual assault allegations against Watson—which, it bears repeating, mysteriously surfaced after the QB made clear that he wouldn’t play for the Houston Texans due to the apparent racism of their owners, the McNair family, coordinated by the same lawyer who’s friends and neighbors with the McNairs, on behalf of two-dozen accusers, not a single one of whom called the police on the QB or did anything else to credibility document the alleged assaults, or could get a single prosecutor to bring charges against the QB—it’s indisputable that Watson’s on-field play is being judged, and judged to an unprecedented degree, based on factors that are completely unrelated to what he’s actually doing on the field.
In other words, it’s indisputable that Deshaun’s on-field play is being severely misrepresented in furtherance of an ulterior agenda. This should bother everyone, not just because lies and misrepresentations in furtherance of secret agendas are inherently bad; there’s also of course the inherent evil in casting unwarranted judgment on another person, a principle that not only underlies every major world religion but is also a fundamental principle on which the United States of America was founded. Here, it’s simply a fact that it’s impossible to know whether the allegations against are true, and to the contrary there’s plenty of reason to believe that they’re not—including not least, and on top of the McNair family’s motive to retaliate against Watson, the well-documented fact that there’s a whole industry of “masseuses” and sex workers who service elite athletes who are groomed to keep their sex lives “professional” until they get married.
So it’s as obvious as ever, and substantially more so after the first six weeks of this NFL season, that what you have here at best is a young black man being judged to an unprecedented degree based on accusations that haven’t been and can’t be proven; and at worst it’s an unprecedented character-assassination campaign being executed in retaliation for a young black QB having used his unprecedented stardom to levy unprecedented criticism and embarrassment upon his NFL owner.
An honest assessment of the evidence must account for the likelihood that the latter is in fact the most likely explanation for the unprecedented scrutiny Watson is facing in the corporate media, including the absurd hit-piece by ESPN, which is ultimately controlled by the NFL owners, and to a lesser degree the owners of the other major sports leagues. As if any more proof were necessary that these outlets make little to no pretense as actual journalism, not unlike the other corporate media outlets owned by mega-billionaires who wish to maintain solidarity with NFL owners and their ability to manipulate public opinion and destroy genuine solidarity among the masses, however dishonestly, including by keeping the boot and muzzle on their “workers” by whatever means.
And what makes this especially obvious in the case of ESPN and the discourse surrounding Watson is that the primary weapon they’re using against him in misrepresenting his on-field play are so-called “advanced” statistics that are impossible to objectively verify and thus aren’t even “statistics” in any meaningful sense of the term. Foremost among these “advanced stats” is ESPN’s own “Total QBR,” cited nearly a dozen times in Barnwell’s piece, which is the first stat that Barnwell cites in trashing Watson’s play—as Watson, according to ESPN, ranks last in the league in with a “Total QBR” of 21.5. Sounds concerning, until one realizes that “Total QBR,” by ESPN’s own admission, is calculated by a secret formula that the company claims to be “proprietary.”
It’s therefore unsurprising that this secret “proprietary formula” would rate Watson’s excellent performance in the Raiders game—which was, again, rated by PFF as the third-best performance of any QB in the league for week 4 (as anyone with two eyes could see)—as a well below average 39.3, with a rating of 50, according to ESPN, reflecting “average” QB play under its “proprietary” “statistic.” This was a game where Watson used his legs and arms to overcome the Browns deficiencies along the line and elsewhere in making a series of improbable plays, completing 24 of 32 passes, throwing a touchdown and an interception that was the result of a drop by Amari Cooper of a pass that should have resulted in a long first-down gain, something that QBR is supposed to account for in the QB’s favor. Compare this to ESPN awarding the league’s new darling, Commanders rookie QB Jayden Daniels, a whopping 73.9 QBR for his performance against the Browns in week 5 in which Daniels completed fewer passes for a lesser percentage, 14/25, made no especially difficult throws to speak of, threw one touchdown, and an interception that, unlike Watson’s against the Raiders, was thrown directly to the opposing player. There’s simply no way to fairly evaluate the performance of these two quarterbacks in these two games and the Total QBR scores awarded by ESPN and conclude anything other than that this so-called “statistic” is an an egregious fraud.
Imagine being subject to accusations in court and the judge sending you to the gallows based on evidence that was secret and “proprietary.” It’s almost as if ESPN’s Total QBR were precisely designed to do just that to Watson’s career, or the career of any star quarterback who got too uppity with the owners.
*And of course it’s understood that certain readers will be triggered by the first sentence of this post suggesting that this wouldn’t be happening to Watson if he weren’t black, but if he weren’t black, he wouldn’t have been inclined to force his way out of Houston in the first place. Also, of course, when guys like John Elway or Eli Manning decide they don’t want to play for a certain organization, it’s fine.
Annnnyway, ho-hum, billionaires using the “journalists” they own and “statistics” they invent to mislead and harm the public for their own personal benefit. Of course it’s the way of the world, and has gotten especially bad since the military-industrial complex killed JFK and destroyed all but an illusion of U.S. democracy in running wild all over the globe for six decades and counting and monopolizing media and public discourse to a degree that’s unprecedented since the founding of this Republic. As a 46-year-old lifelong Cleveland sports fan who’s been a licensed and practicing lawyer in Ohio’s courts for what’s going on decades I’m certainly no longer naïve enough to believe that anyone will ever chase the devil from the earth. But I know just as well that we absolutely can chase it from our communities and we should never stop trying. And of course if this website is proof of anything it’s that every time they think they’ve buried us with their evil ways they forgot that we’re seeds. Oh and last I checked this is still America, a free country, where all people are created equal and are innocent until proven guilty. And this, of course, is still the Northeast Ohio, the cradle of American football and the greatest athlete on the planet, where nothing is given and everything is earned.
All of which is not so much to say that the people who are responsible for all the hatred, judgment, and lies about Deshaun should be ashamed of themselves (Of course they should be); Or that we should all demand better from American institutions as influential as the NFL, at least in terms of adhering to the basic American values that are being trashed to a shamefully unprecedented degree in this whole Watson saga, and serving as a custodian of these franchises that should serve above all else as community assets and sources of genuine community solidarity (Of course we should. And we are!). Nor is it so much to address the type of so-called “sports fan,” “football fan,” “Browns fan,” or “Cleveland fan” who’s so insulated in a cocoon of privilege that they find it socially acceptable and even rewarding to trash Watson, even just to say that the QB is “creepy,” no matter whether their judgment is warranted—say, for example, your urban corporate lawyer or hack, effete NBA blogger-types, online sports “influencers”/clowns who drive outrage for clicks, or the far-too-common type of person that has no compunction about treating anyone who prefers Team Red over Team Blue or vice versa in our kayfabe political system as a lower form of human. Though of course these people should work on falling out of love with the smell of their own farts and do much better as well. Not to mention the plain old racists who are eating this all up like pigs at the trough.
This post, rather, is more for the rest of us. The yin to the yang of the dark forces responsible for or taken in by the campaign against Deshaun. The folks who will drown out any boos at the Stadium on Sunday, or would if they could be there. The people who have enough brains, heart, or guts that they aren’t so easily influenced by liars or internet astroturf, and who can see that the way the Cleveland Browns organization, ownership, staff, and locker room has remained in solidarity with Watson in the face of the malicious, deplorable, and profoundly un-American campaign against him is actually something to be very proud of as a Browns fan, a Cleveland fan, an American, a football fan, a sports fan, and a human.
However corrupt the NFL is and however much it comes to resemble pro-wrestling-style football-like-entertainment-substance, football is still football, Cleveland is still Cleveland, the Browns are still the Browns, and there’s only so much the worst of them can ever take away from those who truly love and appreciate it (not that they won’t keep trying, more on the Brook Park dome later, anyway …).
God bless America, go Browns, and thanks as always for reading Cleveland Frowns.
