Deshaun Watson has spent his entire career making other people look smart. So it’s no surprise that it happened again after just about every NFL fan rejoiced when the news of Bill O’Brien’s firing broke. Deshaun was free from what many believed to be an unimaginative offense and would finally be able to flourish.
Since O’Brien’s firing, Watson has more than flourished. He’s been the NFL’s best quarterback no matter the lens you choose to view it through. Since Week 5, Watson is Pro Football Focus’ highest-graded quarterback at 92.7. He leads all quarterbacks in success rate and trails only Patrick Mahomes in EPA per play. He’s averaging 9.0 yards per attempt, which leads the league. He’s thrown 19 touchdown passes — only Mahomes has thrown more — and two interceptions — only Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees (who has missed several games) have thrown fewer.
I could keep going, but you get the picture. He’s been very good.
Watson is thriving but not necessarily for the reasons one might suspect. It’s not that he’s been freed from an offense that put too much on his plate. It’s actually the opposite. With O’Brien out of the picture, Texans offensive coordinator Tim Kelly is heaping even more on that plate, as Watson’s personal quarterback coach Quincy Avery told me this week.
“I think they’re putting more on Deshaun’s shoulders in terms of him figuring situations out to create plays down the field,” Avery said. “I think when your head coach is a play-caller, there’s a tentativeness to your play-call selection. That made it difficult for him to call the game in a way that he necessarily wanted to, but now he’s able to call it as he sees it and there’s not too many chefs in the kitchen.”
Kelly has been smart enough to recognize what he has in Watson and what he has is one of the smartest pocket passers in the NFL. We rarely hear the fourth-year quarterback described in those terms. Beyond the obvious explanation for why that is — good old fashion racial bias — Avery has another theory explaining why the NFL world at large hasn’t recognized that aspect of Watson’s ever-expanding skillset.
“There’s a bit of racial bias there and then they’ve seen him do these super athletic plays and say ‘Well, he’s just successful because he can do X, Y and Z.’ But his ability to process information and recall things in the middle of a game are as good as it gets.”
That isn’t just the talk of a biased trainer, either. The numbers back up everything Avery is saying there. Strip out all of the scrambles, and all of the schematic shortcuts that reduce a quarterback’s thinking, and Watson stands out from the rest of the league. Here’s a look at how the league’s quarterbacks stack up in EPA on straight dropbacks (so no play-action) that stay in the pocket…
You see those two bars towering over the rest of the league? That’s Watson and Mahomes … and Watson isn’t the one in second.
When you strip out two of those most-used schematic shortcuts, screen passes and RPOs — meaning we’re just looking at “pure” dropbacks now — the gap between Watson and the rest of the league, including Mahomes, grows…
Watson hasn’t just developed into a pocket passer. He’s developed into an elite pocket passer while still providing that second threat (his running ability) that every team is looking for in a quarterback. That combination is rare, and it allows him to not just get the most out of what’s around him — which is hard enough for a lot of quarterbacks — but he’s actually elevating it. Avery explained:
“They’re not creating a bunch of situations where people are just open and he’s benefitting from the play-calling being so great. He’s able to quickly diagnose things [without that schematic help]. You see him have to diagnose things and have to create plays within the pocket. He does everything you ask a quarterback to do and you don’t see those other guys — those system guys — do anything outside of what the offense is asking them to do.”
Watson has always had the ability to beat teams with his mind — just not to this extent. But there’s been a natural progression. A slow climb to the summit he’s reached in 2020. How did it happen? Getting the necessary reps to build up that mental Rolodex.
“Teams used to think they could trick him by sending pressure at him,” Avery says. “They’ve realized they can’t do that anymore. He knows exactly where the issues in protection are and where to go with the ball to beat the defense … [Early in his career] he just didn’t have that data to comb through as he was seeing things previously. It’s become a situation where he goes out on a field and he doesn’t feel like there’s any situation he hasn’t seen before.”
Watson’s own assessment of his improvement sounds awfully similar…
“I’ve just been that quarterback — that point guard,” Watson said before the Texans’ 41-25 win over the Lions on Thanksgiving. “Just taking the game in and really learning how to master my craft as a quarterback and read defenses and tell you what the defense is giving me.”
His mastery of the craft is most apparent when the Texans put him in empty. The defense knows he’s passing the ball. They know he only has five blockers in protection and has to get rid of the ball quickly. It doesn’t matter; he still dominates … and that’s been the case for two years running. After finishing second in success rate on empty dropbacks in 2019, he’s leading the NFL in 2020 — and nobody is within five percentage points of him.
Watson is making better (and quicker) decisions, but he hasn’t sacrificed the big-play ability. He’s still making those highlight-reel plays at a high rate.
Deshaun Watson was pretty much in god mode for 60 minutes on Sunday pic.twitter.com/uTiF3vibKH
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) November 23, 2020
But he’s found the perfect balance between playing smart and being aggressive. According to PFF, Watson has the lowest “Turnover Worthy Play Percentage” in the league, while only Rodgers ranks ahead of Watson in “Big-time Throw Percentage.”
We are the world pic.twitter.com/sJ2bml0a5Y
— Eric Eager 📊🏈 (@PFF_Eric) December 1, 2020
That Watson has been able to avoid those negative plays — but still make the more difficult ones — while playing for a losing team is quite remarkable.
Everybody already knows Watson is special, but, because of the Texans’ record, I don’t know if the football-watching public has caught on to just how special he’s become. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he’s already the second-best quarterback in the league and that the gap between him and that alien in Kansas City is almost negligible. The two are already putting up similar numbers and only one of them has Andy Reid, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce.
Of all of the impressive numbers I offered up throughout this piece, this one might be the most impressive: Watson is only 25 and will only get better from here.
How can Watson get better? With the way he’s playing right now, it’s hard to find a significant deficiency, but Avery says he and Watson have already targeted some areas of his game to work on. He’s just not willing to divulge them publicly.
Obviously, the Texans bringing in a coach who puts Watson in a position to succeed will help — Avery prefers a scheme that puts the mental burden on the quarterback — but with the way he’s trending, it probably doesn’t matter who’s calling the plays.
For truly elite quarterbacks, which Watson has become, it hardly ever does.
[jwplayer FX1pVdyR-q2aasYxh]