Deshaun Watson is your new favorite rookie quarterback

Deshaun Watson is on a tear, and he’s established himself not only as a Rookie of the Year but your new favorite rookie.

This year’s quarterback draft class wasn’t one that got a lot of credit on draft night. There were decent prospects selected, but overall the feeling was that the class would be mediocre.

Through the first four weeks of the season, the draft class not only looks phenomenal but has already produced a star in the making. Last year Texas saw the arrival of Dak Prescott in Dallas, and a year later Houston seems to have found its franchise quarterback of the future.

Deshaun Watson threw four touchdowns in Sunday’s blowout win over the Tennessee Titans, bringing his rookie total to seven through three starts. Last weekend he nearly led Houston to an upset win over the Patriots and it seems that wasn’t a fluke.

We’re only a quarter of the way through the season, but Watson has fully established himself as the Rookie of the Year.

Both New England and Tennessee are legit playoff contenders, and Watson totaled over 500 yards and six touchdowns against both in back-to-back weeks. Total evisceration doesn’t begin to describe what Watson did, and it’s time to take him absolutely seriously as a future star in the NFL.

You can say ‘well it was just two games‘, but it was against the favored Super Bowl winner and a division foe largely seen as superior. There were no two opponents more perfect for Watson to go off like this on and establish himself with a national audience.

This also is an indictment of Bill O’Brien. Houston is winning, but O’Brien used a full offseason’s worth of tape and practice to determine that Tom Savage was better than Watson. To be fair, it’s always a gamble to pick a rookie based on a positive preseason, but O’Brien went full knight at the end of Last Crusade and chose poorly.  He’s riding coattails of a decision he didn’t make and has fallen ass-backward into a situation that might save his job.

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Are the Texans Super Bowl contenders? I want to say no, but any doubting of the Texans needs to be weighed against doubts everyone had about Watson. We’ve already been wrong once about Houston and the team’s rookie quarterback continues to defy expectation.

Watson won a national championship last year with Clemson, which caught the attention of NFL scouts in Houston. After two weeks of high-powered offensive production, it’s time the rest of the league takes full notice as well.