PHILADELPHIA — Kevin Stefanski didn’t hesitate to answer when asked after Sunday’s 20-16 loss to the Eagles if he’s still sticking with Deshaun Watson, who had the whole NFL world calling for his benching last week.
“Yes,” he said without elaborating.
It’s an unpopular move for most Browns fans, who want someone to pay for this mess of an offense and for the Browns’ four-game losing streak that has them at 1-5 and needing a minor miracle to make the playoffs.
But sticking with Watson is the right decision, in large part because the Browns need to know what they have in their $230 million man by the end of the season. They need to know if they must go in another direction, or if they can win with the four-time Pro Bowler who’s fallen on hard times and is leading one of the worst offenses in Browns history.
If they can fix his issues and the myriad problems around him, perhaps they can still coax something resembling the Houston version of Watson out of him. But the problems on offense are so systemic that a switch to Jameis Winston or Dorian Thompson-Robinson probably wouldn’t help much.
Even if it did provide a spark, the Browns wouldn’t know what they have in the quarterback for whom they surrendered three first-round picks and awarded the first fully guaranteed contract in the history of the NFL.
Would they need to eat the two more years on his contract at $46 million a year? Try to sign a quarterback in free agency? Draft one?
Those are huge questions that can’t be answered definitively with him riding the bench.
Granted, Watson struggled in the first half (5 of 11 for 46 yards, 3 sacks). And he was off target on a number of deep throws to Amari Cooper (4 of 6 targets for 42 yards) and Jerry Jeudy (1 of 3 targets for 35 yards).
But he settled down in the second half to go 11 of 12 for 122 yards for a 109.0 rating after the break. Overall, he went 16 of 23 for 168 yards with no TDs and no INTs for a 90.5 rating.
What’s more, he had the Browns in position to tie or win the game on his last drive of the fourth quarter, getting them into a third and goal from the 3, before two false starts thwarted the comeback.
“It’s tough,” Watson said. “Yeah, it’s very frustrating. That was our chance, especially all day we’ve been working there. There’ve been penalties and stops and just things like that. And the one time we try to put ourselves in position to go win, we didn’t do it. And yeah, it’s tough. It’s definitely frustrating.”
On that drive, Watson — who was sacked five times for a season total of 36 and hit another 10 — kicked it off a 35-yard pass to Jerry Jeudy and a 14-yarder to Pierre Strong Jr to the Philly 21.
Cooper was flagged 15 yards for a facemask on a deep ball on the right side of the goal line, but the Browns overcame it, in part with a 13-yard dart to Cooper on third and 10 to the 8.
But the two false starts, one by rookie Zak Zinter on third and goal from the 3 and one by Jedrick Wills Jr. on fourth and goal from the 8, spoiled the chance to go for the TD.
Stefanski opted for the 31-yard field goal on fourth and 13 that produced the final margin, and the Eagles sealed the victory on the next drive with a 40-yard pass to the Browns’ 12.
But those false starts weren’t the only offensive blunders in the game. The Browns lost center Nick Harris on the third play to a season-ending broken fibula that will require surgery, shifted right guard Michael Dunn to center, and inserted rookie Zak Zinter back at right guard.
Harris was already subbing starting center Ethan Pocic (knee).
“That was the first time I’ve ever worked with Michael Dunn at center,” Watson said. “I think he did a heck of a job, honestly, to step over in that position and hold his own.”
Dunn did the best he could, but had some high snaps, and committed a holding call in the fourth quarter that wiped out an 11-yard scramble by Watson on third down to the Philly 12. The Browns settled for a field goal and 13-13 tie with 9:49 left. But the offensive woes started from the jump.
On the Browns’ opening drive, Cooper dropped a short pass over the middle for a three-and-out. It wasn’t a great throw, but catchable nonetheless.
On the second drive, Wills false-started, and Watson was later sacked for 15 yards. In the second quarter, Watson and Cooper were way off on a sideline route, and then Watson dropped a ball short at David Njoku’s feet.
Cooper, ever the pro, assumed blamed for the early misfire.
“It was just a miscommunication,” Cooper said. “I’ll definitely take the blame for that. It was on me.”
Later in the quarter, Watson was off on a deep ball to Jeudy at the 2, where the corner had tight coverage with safety help.
“Especially first half, I missed out on some opportunities,” Watson said. “The biggest thing was just a couple of deep shots. The timing was a little bit off, just miscommunication with a couple of receivers on what I’m seeing and what they’re seeing. And I take responsibility of that because they showed a little bit differently. Usually their defensive corners played a lot of soft coverage, off coverage. Today they pressed us up and we were expecting off, but they pressed us up.
“I guess during the week I didn’t emphasize a little bit more with the receivers on what I wanted to do with that. But overall I think second half was much better. Defense, our special teams did a great job of getting us 10-10 and were putting together a good drive and that kind of stalled. So yeah. Yeah, I mean we lost at the end of the day.”
After the errant deep ball to Jeudy, an 18-yard run by D’Onta Foreman was nullified by a holding call on tight end George Swain.
But Watson overcame it with a 10-yard pass to Cooper and then one of his best passes of the day, a 14-yard bullet squeezed into Njoku in traffic to convert a fourth and 4. A play later, he was off-target again on pass in the end zone to Jeudy, after urgently reminding Eljah Moore to go in motion.
The Browns settled for a field goal on that drive to close to within 10-3 after Watson was sacked on third down.
“I thought there were some good moments,” Stefanski said of Watson’s day. “You know, we need to protect. We need to keep him clean when we can. That’s a good front. I thought the guys battled like crazy. Had some decent opportunities there, but got to find a way to be more explosive.”
In addition to losing his center, Watson lost his starting running back in Jerome Ford to a hamstring injury in the second quarter, but the Browns overcame it with some nice runs by D’Onta Foreman (10 for 31) and Pierre Strong Jr. (8 for 43). But the mistakes, penalties, sacks and missed throws were too much to overcome. In the third quarter, Cedric Tillman lost 5 yards on an jet sweep on third and 1 with Winston in the game for the conversion. Dustin Hopkins pushed the 52-yard field goal attempt wide right that would’ve put the Browns up 13-10.
“Just stop shooting ourselves in the foot, putting ourselves in third and long,” Watson said. “When we do capitalize on third down, there’s a penalty. Goal-line, just being able to score and not going back, especially the last two weeks, we’re right there at the 1 or 3 or 2 and we’re going backwards and that’s two weeks in a row where things could have gone differently, who knows? It’s super tough.”
Going just by the numbers, it’s hard to make a case for sticking with Watson. The Browns have scored one touchdown in 29 quarters, and are the first team in 10 years to go the first six games without scoring 20 points. Watson has passed for fewer than 200 yards in all six games, and the Browns are abysmal on third down, going 3-for-12 for 25% and converting their first one late in the third quarter.
But Cooper defended his quarterback even as their playoffs hopes fade.
“At the end of the day, we knew we had an opportunity to win,” Cooper said. “I think somebody said something about stats in the second half, 11 of (12) maybe. I’m not sure about that. But like I said before, we had momentum. He had momentum. We just didn’t take advantage of it in the best way possible.”
Despite the dire straits the Browns find themselves in, they’re still hopeful of a turnaround, especially with three home games up next beginning with the Bengals, Nick Chubb coming back for that game, and all of their division games in front of them.
“The chance is there, the opportunity is there,” Watson said. “We see it. I think everyone sees it. It’s just the margin error is super small in this league and we can’t do that. I mean we’ve lost these games, 20 to 16, twice. The Vegas game. It was very similar, the Giants game. So all these games are super, super close outside of Dallas and Washington and it’s right there in our hands and we’re not taking it. We’ve just got to take it one week at a time and just try to find a different way.”
But the one thing they shouldn’t do is bench their quarterback before they know for sure how good or bad he really is.
