NFL

Day 1

Kind of blaffing really. Igorning all the rape, he quit on his team after getting a huge extention. That should have been the biggest red flag against trading for him. He actually sat out a year of his prime. No other elite QB has than that and now we exactly see why.

Making the trade was a disaster in and of itself.

The contract is on another level.

Right around the time the browns thought "hey, let's trade for DeShaun Watson"

I mean the whole entire time lol

If Wikipedia is accurate in this case, Paul DePodesta (who was the inspiration for Pete in Moneyball, did you know?) helped facilitate the deal. Learned that just last week.

Also, the trade has killed any good faith non-Browns fans (including this Bills fan) ever had for the Browns.

How any team could acquire a human tire fire like Watson I'll never understand. Course, I'm not as smart as Paul DePodesta, so.

It was a disaster the day they did it, lol

How many years did they sign him for?

Right now

It was from day one lol

Is it not already

Even if you ignore all the rapes, the answer is about two weeks ago

Quincy Avery and Ryan Clark going to call the article writer a racist

Well the issue is is that it can be called one right now. As of this moment, it is beyond a trainwreck. The only reason it's not seen as a bigger one is because they're team away from Watson has been performing well. But they've traded major picks away for a guy who has become the literal opposite of what they needed.

The only question from here is, what ceiling remains? How good can the trade become? If Watson becomes 75% of what he was in Houston at his prime, would it have been worth it? Can Watson get back to being even 50% of his prime? Right now not many of these futures has an upside.

I am all for that trade. I don’t think I’ve seen a better trade ever made in the history of the Texans, at least. Which isn’t saying much, I’ll admit.

But, not our problem. And, we drafted a very promising QB. So, thanks Browns!

Day 1. For the trade to be a success he needed to perform immediately like a top 3-5 qb (he hasn’t) and they needed both their part round picks they had left to be massive hits AND they needed to move some pieces for earlier round draft capital to keep the team salary cap in check. He’s a 64ish million hit next year and regardless what you do from this point you almost are forced to offload solid pieces to make the $$ work

I think this article signals it

If it wasn’t for the Browns circumventing the Texans, which is why they had to add an additional l 3rd round pick, the Texans probably were going to get a better deal from the Falcons.

Soon as the ink dried

Yeah, I think most of us were there as soon as it happened.

When pen hit paper

Before it was even agreed upon.

I’m so glad this isn’t the Dolphins and it was oh so close to being the Dolphins.

The minute he signed that $230M fully guaranteed deal that intentionally structured his first year contract to lose as little money as possible from his suspension. That was when it should have been considered a disaster.

The day the trade was made. Lol

Immediately. Dumbass organization.

When they made the trade it was that

It's crazy that the two worst trades in NFL history were made in the same offseason

I hate Watson but to be as unbiased as possible, not yet. They're 4-2 somehow. If he doesn't improve at all, or he gets so expensive they have to lose Myles Garrett or something like that. If they make the playoffs the next 3 years then it is what it is there are so many good qbs getting to the playoffs and being lucky to get healthy and hot at the right time is the name of the game.

??? Haven’t we already said this was a bad stupid trade

Thank you Browns for taking the heat off Denver

Literally when they made the trade lol. PR nightmare, ungodly guaranteed money, etc.

Two years ago

This might end up being the biggest fleecing since the Herschel trade if the Texans make the right picks with the haul we got from the Browns. I hate to see it for Browns fans but this vicious cycle doesn’t end until Jimmy Haslam sells the team.

When the Ink dried?

The day it was signed.

Yesterday

Why did such an unbelievably stupid article get 535 upvotes?

Probably not an unpopular opinion, but it was a disaster immediately. From a PR standpoint, guaranteed money, and now the on field product. The rest of the team is pretty good and doesn’t have all the off field stuff attached to them.

The moment they made it

So I decided to put Deshaun Watson hatred aside and just look at his stats and compensation to see how bad is contract actually is. To do this, I looked at the pro football reference Approximate Value (AV) and cap number as percent of salary cap (Cap %) for every QB in 2022 who started at least as many games as DeShaun Watson, which is 4 games. In this way, we can compare how much production each team got in 2022 in return for the salary cap spending.

Top AV/Cap%

1. Jalen Hurts (2857)
2. Brock Purdy (2000)
3. Davis Mills (1167) - Hunh? Davis Mills is among the worst with only 7 AV, but he also only took up 0.6% of the cap, so he was way cheaper than he was bad = great value! If only they had used that extra cap space well!

By this metric, DeShaun Watson was the 33rd ranked QB contract year with AV/Cap% of 93, or the 6th worst of all QBs with at least 4 starts, so as of the start of this season it was already a disaster.

The only contracts worse than his by this metric, Kirk Cousins, Matt Ryan, Sam Darnold, Ryan Tannehill, and Carson Wentz, in that order. Each of these player took up at least 8.8% of the cap, and all of them except Kirk were 29th or worse in total production. Kirk was 12th, but took up 15% of the cap, which is 3rd most expensive.

But - we should note it was not because he was bad, but because of his sexual misconduct suspension that he only played 6 games. The length of this suspension was originally supposed to be only 6 games total, so he would have played 11 games. If Watson had played 11 games under the original suspension terms, and had the same amount of AV per game, he would have had the 22nd ranked QB contract year - merely on the bad side of mediocre, but not a disaster. If he had started all 17 games it would have been 20th ranked. The additional 5 games imposed after appeal therefore turned it from a kinda bad contract year to a disaster.

Now, we don't know how Watson will play for the remainder of his contract. But if he continues to play similarly at 0.67 AV per start, and we assume the QBs on average will perform similarly and be compensated similarly over the remainder of his contract as they did in 2022, we can look at where each year of his contract would rank on a per game basis, had it occurred in 2022.

• 2023: 9.4% of cap, Contract Rank: 31. Terrible.
• 2024 - 2026: 31.55%, Contract Rank: 37. Horrific.
• 2027: 4.43% of cap, Contract Rank: 31. Back to "only" terrible.

What would we have to do simply not be overpaid? Well, in that particularly horrendous 2024-2026 stretch, he would have to put out something like 123 AV just be to be ranked 19th (out of 38 QBs with at least 4 starts). Patrick Mahomes put out 17 AV in 2022, for comparison.

This contract was in fact a disaster from the start, no matter who it was, because an QB would have to be about 7x better than Patrick Mahomes for at least 3 out of 7 years just to not be overpaid. 32% of the cap for 3 years guaranteed for 3 years is truly and utterly insane.

As soon as it went through. He was never worth that contract.

from day 1

It was a disaster the moment they traded away those picks for him. It's only gotten worse since. It's hilarious. Only the browns could hit rock bottom and then somehow go lower.

Before it even happened to most people with a brain. Diva quitter with giant "character issues." You would have had to have been a grade a unapologetic moron to have jumped on this.

Uh… the suspension and before they even traded for him?

The very moment it was official