https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/11/30/mmqb-week-12-kendall-hinton-denver-broncos DESHAUN WATSON’S BRILLIANCE We’ll get to the Texans’ future in a second, but is it too far out there to think that their present has suddenly become more relevant? This much I can say: Deshaun Watson is red hot and, when we talked following Houston’s 41–25 rout of Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, he seemed anything but ready to concede the 2020 season. “Yeah, we just gotta win out,” he said, as one of the team busses pulled away from Ford Field and headed to the airport. “We gotta keep the momentum rolling and win out. It’s a possibility, especially with all the divisional games, and we’ve got Cincinnati and Chicago outside the division. Lot of big games, a lot of opportunities for us to go out there and produce. Keep everyone healthy and we’ll see what happens.” Lots of things have gone wrong for the Texans this year. The decision they made to extend Watson three months ago—inking him to a four-year, $156 million deal—is not one of them. And Watson’s right about where his team stands, too. Right now the Titans are 8–3 and the Colts are 7–4. If the Texans win out, they’ll finish 9–7, with a 5–1 record in the division. To get there, they’ll have to beat the Colts twice in the next three weeks, which would put the Colts at six losses. Indy would need to lose one more, but they still visit the Raiders and Steelers. The Texans would also have to beat the Titans in Week 17, and the Titans would have to really melt down before then (their schedule: Cleveland, at Jacksonville, Detroit, at Green Bay). But if Houston were to finish 9–7, they’d be 5–1 in the division and hold the tiebreakers to go to the playoffs. Likely? Nope, it’s not. But that it’s even possible is a tribute, in large part, to how Watson’s led the team, with his own personal approach rubbing off on the team. “I’m a patient individual,” Watson told me. “Everything happens for a reason. I’m always trying to turn negativity, any bad situation, into a positive. That’s been my whole life. I just have a great supporting cast around me that always motivates me and keeps me focused, and is never letting me get down on myself or down on the situation, so I keep looking forward. I’ve never been in the situation that I’ve been through this year, so for me, I tried to look at it in a way where it’s a little change, and I’m gonna try to turn this thing around.” No question, Watson did his part Thursday—riddling the Lions for 318 yards and four touchdowns on 17-of-25 passing. And three of those four scoring strikes were high-degree-of-difficulty dimes. So, to illustrate the level at which he’s playing, I figured we’d have him break those plays down. 2nd Quarter, 10:32 left, 33 yards to Duke Johnson: “We’d just seen our matchup over there one-on-one, and I like my matchup with Duke. It was one of the linebackers out there, gave him a double move, and Duke ran right past him. And I gave him a great ball and he made a great catch. They were playing that one-high [safety] look, I just had to make sure I saw his angle coming out of the blitz and just get the ball to him.” 4th Quarter, 12:16 left, 40 yards to Will Fuller: “A lot of teams this year have been trying to take away our deep shots, they know that’s what we’ve based our offense off of. So we have to pick our spots. We had a one-high safety and Will on the outside. Will did a good job with his release, and same thing—I just liked the matchup on that. And I let him use speed and put it out there in the back of the end zone so the safety couldn’t get it.” 4th Quarter, 10:17 left, 34 yards to Will Fuller (trick play): “We knew we were gonna run that, and there were a couple more of them but they had a different defense than what we’d seen all week, so I checked out of those. That one right there, it was actually Duke making a great play. Because when I called the play and broke the huddle, he told me before he got back, ‘If they bring pressure, I’m gonna keep it.’ I was like, ‘Alright, cool.’ They brought the pressure, and he kept it—that’s why he kept it longer than he was supposed to, it was supposed to be a flea-flicker. And then I’d told him that I’d call his name when we run it. And so he turned around and flipped it back to me and Will was sitting out there wide open.” And as a result, now the Texans’ season looks a lot less like a dumpster fire than it did, and that’s just the power of having a franchise quarterback in his prime—he can affect change at that level if he’s on his game. Watson is that, as the franchise he leads inches closer to some critical global decisions that owner Cal McNair’s going to have to make. To that end, over the last few weeks, McNair has actually consulted with Watson on the direction of the franchise and, in turn, Watson does feel a level of responsibility in helping to get the organization back on track. “Yeah, of course,” he said. “They signed me to a long-term deal to be there, so of course they’re going to come to me and ask me. But right now, I’m just focused on the season. I’m focused on trying to stack these wins and make opportunities come. When the season ends, they want to have me involved with it. But they also want to make sure that I’m focused on doing everything I can for the rest of the year. “So I’m pretty sure that Cal and everyone else involved in the organization will consult me. They already mentioned that to me, but that’s more them saying they want to keep everybody in lockstep, and we’ll just go from there.” The interesting thing? Watson himself is probably the greatest selling point McNair has, in trying to get the best coach and GM candidates excited about competing for those jobs. And that’s because having him will be one heck of a starting point for someone.
Watson is so damn impressive, for the love of God this franchise cannot waste his career, it took 15 years just to find someone like him. What I like the most about him is he plays with his brain first. The way he breaks down plays post-game is a thing a beauty, so cerebral.
