What’s the over/under on how many games Watson will actually start this season? I don’t think he gets past 5 before being benched or injured.
I sometimes struggle with my fandom of NFL football. To add to that feeling:
New study of deceased NFL players shows alarming numbers of CTE.
Now the headline of “25%” is a little misleading, because there were 878 deaths of ex-NFL players in the 2016-2021 years studied, and 215 positive tests for CTE. But not all of the 878 were autopsied; there were 643 that were not studied. So, among the 235 brains that were tested, 215 were found to be positive for CTE. That’s scary.
I wish I could say I will no longer watch NFL football, but, to be honest, I will.
Say what you want about the Cardinals but they seem to be truly trying to rebuild. Teams do it in the NFL all the time and it works.
The Browns cant afford to right now, I believe.
Rebuild, that is.
The Browns don’t have a decent QB on their roster. I agree that Watson shouldn’t be playing, but he’s probably the best they have. There’s a bit of speculation that they’re trotting out Watson for the first 2 games - both away games. If he starts hot, great, but if he sucks, then he gets pulled and Sanders gets to be the hero for the home opener, uniting the fanbase instead of starting the season with Sanders, having him suck, and then have constant controversy that Watson should come in to replace him. It does make a certain amount of tactical sense if you know all your QBs are garbage.
I don’t even care. It’s gonna be awful to watch either way.
The conspiracy theories make sense for the front office or Jimmy Haslam.
Not for Todd Monken. He wasn’t exactly a top tier coaching candidate, and he’s going to want to burnish his resume with as many wins (or at least competitive games) as possible. He’s not going to get cute with the rosters or starters when he’s calling the shots for the first time.
He probably does think Watson gives him the best chance of that, which is truly pathetic. He knew going into this situation it was a crap hand, but it was also the only way he could get a seat at the table this season.
Watson probably does give them the best chance. He’s awful. Sanders is awful. Watson had a decent looking first preseason game and Sanders a poor one and then the second vice versa. Monken sees the practices, realizes they’re both awful. Watson at least gets the team lined up right. Sanders takes probably a second and a half longer than any other QB to throw, and then he chucks it up there for anyone to catch at the end of 3.7 seconds. No way he’s not a turnover machine. At least Watson has strung together reasonable games in the past.
Not advocating for Watson and he should be benched out of principle, but he probably does give the team the best (low) chance to win.
See, it wasn’t a mistake to sign him after all!
(I know you’re not saying that, but I guarantee someone in the Cleveland organization is.)
Even Jimmy Haslam came out publicly and said the signing was a swing and a miss. Ain’t nobody in that organization saying it wasn’t a mistake, unless Watson is in the room. And they’re still thinking it in that case
So did they literally just throw away that third round pick on Dillon Gabriel? I’m shocked that not only is Gabriel not the starter, he’s not even in the conversation.
I don’t know what your expectations were.
Sure, the occasional 3rd round or later QB pick will become a solid starter or even franchise QB, but the vast majority top out at career backup or solid journeyman. And those are the ‘best’ among them. Most wash out or never get anywhere.
The 3rd round or later is a good place to take a chance on a QB, not a great place to expect even competent play from a rookie or even 2nd year non-starter.
Even the exceptions are telling in some ways. Russell Wilson was taken in the 3rd round but that was back when height mattered a lot more to front offices. He’d have been a first round pick or even first QB picked up in the draft if he had a prototypical QB’s height. Dak Prescott slid more than he really should have given his pedigree.
Dillon Gabriel was always thought to be a development project who was more of a “well, he might end up surprising people” type in a draft already considered weak for QBs, not remotely a top prospect with killer numbers and expectations.
I’m not nearly as tuned into Browns news as I used to be, but I haven’t heard a peep about Gabriel. He was supposed to be one of those physically limited but savvy and smart dudes that was supposed to hit the ground running, and he didn’t, so he’s sort of the opposite of a developmental prospect. If doesn’t start quickly, it’s unlikely he’s going to add that much with development time.
What’s actually the outlier here is not that a third round QB got forgotten but that so many people treat a 5th round QB as deserving as much of a chance and attention as he’s getting. People still treat Sanders as though he was a serious candidate for being a first rounder even though the actual draft proved that he wasn’t, he was so hyped that he still has some of that hype even though being passed on by the whole NFL 4 times really should’ve deflated it.
Of course most of it is simply because the Browns, for the, oh, 20th year out of the last 26 or so, simply have no real QB on their roster so there’s more attention given to the scraps because it’s one of the few “QB competitions” in the league.
RIP Pro Bowl
It’s been the walking dead for at least a decade, and was a poor-quality game for years before that. The league kept trying to milk Pro Bowl weekend for anything it could, because the NFL abhors empty space, and instead tries to fill that space with any content that will draw eyeballs, but I guess they finally realized that fans simply didn’t care.
I wish they’d invest and expand in the pro bowl games gimmicks, I kind of enjoy those. Run races to see who’s the fastest dude in the NFL, have QBs throw balls at moving targets to rack up score, see which linebacker can push one of those field sled tackling things the furthest, which receiver can make the trickiest catches at the edge of their wingspan, etc. It’s a little silly but more entertaining than seeing people sleepwalk through a fake game.
My guess is that the league would say, “we’ve been trying that, and the ratings have sucked.”
Yeah, I guess I’d be a prime example of that because I don’t even know if they’ve tried to do that the last couple of years, so I’m not exactly supporting what I said I’d like to see.
Apparently, this year, they only televised the flag football game; they didn’t even bother televising the skills competitions.
In the modern era, where any injuries can potentially cost top tier players millions of dollars, I can’t see anything the league can do to actually change matters, save big payouts and/or contract guarantees for their current teams that would massively inflate the cost.
Back when players weren’t paid so well, an extra check plus a Hawaiian vacation was plenty. These days, participation is more of a liability than any sort of bonus.