Deshaun Watson is stuck in football purgatory with the Texans
The Houston Texans have one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks but are stuck with an 0-3 record. Deshaun Watson’s career is stuck in the mud.
The Texans have been a perennial playoff participant with Deshaun Watson at the helm of their offense, but this season’s 0-3 start has that streak in jeopardy. Unfortunately for Watson, his long-term prospects for success in Houston aren’t good.
In fairness to Bill O’Brien and his coaching staff, the Texans don’t have a bad loss on the season. Plenty of teams will lose games to the Chiefs, Ravens, and Steelers. The schedule makers didn’t do Houston any favors by giving them such stern opponents to open the season.
That doesn’t change the fact that Houston face long odds to make the playoffs this season. That’s a huge disappointment for Watson. Teams with quarterbacks with his kind of talent in the prime of their careers are supposed to be Super Bowl contenders. Instead, Houston looks like a franchise that’s set up to hover around .500 for the foreseeable future.
O’Brien might be a decent NFL head coach, but he’s one of the worst GMs in the league. His offseason decision to offload DeAndre Hopkins is the most high profile of his personnel mistakes. Hopkins was clearly looking for a contract the Texans were unwilling to pay, but dealing him robbed Watson of his most prolific wide receiver. Opponents have found it much easier to defend Houston’s passing attack on the young season as a result.
The fact that J.J. Watt is approaching the twilight of his playing career also means the Texans defense is likely going to decline steadily over the next few seasons. That will heap even more pressure onto Watson to elevate the offense to a unit that’s consistently a top-five unit. It’s hard to construct how that will happen with the current level of talent surrounding him.
Watson can make magical plays on his own, but he needs a better infrastructure to match the likes of Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Watson for NFL supremacy.
Watson’s recent decision to ink a four-year, $156 million extension with the team will also complicate the Texans’ ability to build a contender. The Texans won’t have a lot of cash available to bring in big-name free agents for the full life of Watson’s new contract. That means O’Brien and his front office will be forced to shop in the bargain bin for players capable of strengthening their roster.
Next. Texans have serious interest in signing Antonio Brown. dark
The biggest opportunity the Texans have for future success is to make a regime change that might benefit Watson. Betting on a coach to be named later isn’t a great recipe for NFL success. Watson is an elite quarterback stuck with a mediocre franchise at the moment. It’s hard to see that changing anytime soon.