Deshaun Watson sees growth, but won’t put ‘timetable’ on progress
BEREA — Deshaun Watson isn’t looking for some kind of moral victory from his performance in Cincinnati. That’s not how the Browns quarterback is judging himself.
Was what Watson did against the Bengals better than a week before? Yes. Was it to his standard of play? Not even close.
“This is a proving league and want to go down each and every week,” Watson said Wednesday. “So last week was definitely an improvement. Of course we wanna score more points and win the game, but if you speak individually, yeah, it was definitely improvement. But I have a long way to go.”
Watson, though, doesn’t have a long way to go to try to see if he can take another step forward. In fact, he has less time than he did between his first and second starts of the season with the Browns having a short week before Saturday afternoon’s home game against the Baltimore Ravens.
That’s one less day for Watson to work on the things that remain the weakest parts of his game. The biggest of those remain the timing he has with his receiving corps, a group that has been hit with some key injuries over the last two weeks.
The Browns’ No. 1 receiver, Amari Cooper, was once again working to the side with the trainers on Wednesday as he recovers from a core muscle injury he sustained late last week. Rookie David Bell, meanwhile, did not practice due to toe and thumb injuries.
That left Donovan Peoples-Jones, who is coming off an eight-catch, 114-yard performance in Cincinnati, and a group of rookie or second-year receivers for Watson to work with in practice. That gave him a ready-made excuse for why the connections remain choppy between him and his receivers, but he wasn’t willing to take it.
“I mean, just everything is about timing at the end of the day,” Watson said. “But at the end of the day for me as a quarterback, I gotta anticipate because there’s injuries that happen, things that happen so you might be out there with a guy that hasn’t practiced with you all week. So, yeah, I say timing is definitely key, but that’s something that in my mind I don’t really try to process because everyone needs to be in the same spot we need to be in when that play is being called.
“So things happen but I don’t want to make any type of excuse of, hey, this is all about timing and things like that. At the end of the day we gotta make the plays and I gotta make the throws.”
Watson lost a full season due to a combination of the more than two dozen allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct made against him in the spring of 2021 while he was still the Houston Texans’ quarterback, as well as the trade demands he made of the Texans at the same time. He lost 11 more games this season due to an NFL suspension in relation to those allegations.
Before that time lost, Watson was arguably one of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL. He had been named to three consecutive Pro Bowls between 2018-20, and in the last of those seasons he led the league in passing.
Watson, obviously, isn’t at that level currently after the long layoff. However, that’s not the bar he’s trying to clear with the Browns.
“I’m not close to where I’m at and I don’t want to be where I was in 2020,” Watson said. “I wanna be better. So I have a long way to go. I want to continue to improve. I want to be that player whenever I step on the field, no one can stop us, and that’s my mentality.
“But you have to go out there and continue to show that and try to do that and not just talk about it, but actually prove it on the field. I’m nowhere near where I want to be, and this team also is nowhere near where we want to be, so we gotta continue to just keep growing and finish the season strong.”
Watson showed that growth from his first to his second start with the Browns. Across the board, not just statistically, but also anecdotally, there was clear improvement in his performance against the Bengals as opposed to the week before against the Texans.
Can that improvement continue against the Ravens? That would be the natural progression, although it would also not take into account the variable of Baltimore’s defense.
Can the next four games be enough to allow Watson to at least head into the offseason at a point where he’s ready to be that quarterback for the 2023 season? He’s not allowing himself to get into the setting of expectations.
“Nah, I don’t put limits on myself,” Watson said. “I don’t put timetables on myself. Like I said, each and every day I just try to find a way to improve. So if that’s mentally, if that’s leadership, if that’s the student of the game, play calling, getting on the same page with (coach) Kevin (Stefanski), (offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt), and those guys. Like every day is an opportunity for me to improve.
“So I don’t want to put any limits or timetable on myself because I’m setting myself up for who knows, disappointment or something like that, if I don’t meet that timeline.”
Contact Chris at [email protected].
On Twitter: @ceasterlingABJ
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