The Next Step for Watson-Don't Panic

The Cleveland Browns only got two days of practice to cure the issues on the offensive side of the ball this week. The amount of panic in the fan base after two weeks in has already reached extreme levels.

Maybe panic isn’t the proper emotion for fans to feel even after Joel Bitonio said that he felt the team’s offense panicked a little bit during Monday night’s loss to the Steelers.

Starting the game with a pick-six and losing your star running back shortly after, was enough to send the team reeling for answers. Now that they’ve had a chance to catch their breath, what solutions they bring to the table will be interesting to see.

You can ask ten QB evaluators to diagnose what’s wrong with Deshaun Watson and come away with ten different answers. This can make things extremely frustrating when searching for the correct answers.

After rewatching the game tape, I feel that there was enough there from a scheme standpoint and route concepts in the pass game. In general I think that Watson is seeing the field and processing well enough when things aren’t muddy in the pocket.

He is occasionally setting a little wide in his stance which leads to some inaccurate throws. The key word is occasionally and in my opinion the bigger issue is just being a split second late on throws and not throwing with the needed anticipation.

It’s as if he is overthinking and playing tight, hesitant to make throws that he should. Compounding all of this and making matters worse is the overall play of the offensive line.

Watson has never been completely comfortable with pressure in his career but in Houston he was able to make big plays out of it. This discomfort is leading him to drop his eyes and not see what’s happening downfield. It’s why those plays just haven’t been there to make in Cleveland.

I continue to believe and maybe I’m being optimistic, that there will be kind of an ahah moment where the switch flips on again for him as he gets used to the speed of having 10-300 pounders surrounding him.

The Browns should do everything possible to give Watson better protection even if this means running less guys out on routes and instead keeping them in to pick up opposing blitzes and helping the tackles.

I would also like to see them call anything they have in the playbook that can give him a moving pocket on designed roll outs. This is a strength they need to play to and as simple as it can get. Give him an easy read and either make the throw or throw it out of bounds.

For Watson, the first step has to be to not panic and bail out. He is such a twitchy athlete it’s hard for not only the defense to grasp him but it also makes it hard on the offensive line to know what direction to hold their blocks.

I remain convinced that as frustrating as the answer is, that it’s just a matter of patience and it’s all going to keep improving with more reps. He has to get comfortable being uncomfortable once again.