Houston Texans: Deshaun Watson is an early Rookie of the Year candidate

The Houston Texans 57-14 win over the Tennessee Titans was the most points scored and margin of victory in franchise history all engineered by Deshaun Watson, an early Rookie of the Year candidate.

The Houston Texans had perhaps the best game I’ve ever seen in the way they were able to take down their opponent in the Tennessee Titans and continue to beat them down when it seemed like they had enough. This was certainly with the heroics of one Deshaun Watson who has officially taken the wheel as the quarterback for the Houston Texans.

Once Watson was given the keys to the Ford F-150 Platinum truck — a euphemism for the offense — he won’t be giving them back to the Tom Savage, that’s for sure. Savage seemed to want to throw them at him because he had taken enough of a tail-whipping from the Jacksonville Jaguars defense in the first half of their Week 1 match up.

With each week, the Houston Texans offense has continued to improve, not incrementally but exponentially. In Week 1, the team had 203 yards of offense, Week 2 (266), Week 3 (417), Week 4 (445). As you can see, it’s apparent that Bill O’Brien — and the rest of his coaching staff — has adjusted the game plan to suit Watson’s strength and it’s paying HUGE dividends. Just to put things in perspective, that’s a 45.6 percent increase from Week 1’s production.

Even though the Jags’ loss was a tough one, it showed promise when he stepped into the game and the offense started to move the chains. I knew from that point forward that he should be the starting quarterback. I wrote about that particular topic after that game, CLICK HERE to take a look at it.

The offense is on the mend and it’s because of Watson’s top-notch play-making abilities. Just think about all the opportunities this team would’ve had the quarterback situation would’ve been sound? Now we’re direct witnesses to the greatness of Watson and he’s only getting warmed-up. That’s the scary part — he’s only shown smidgen of what he could in his 3 1/2 weeks of play.

He was a machine today — he was 25-for-34 for 283 yards (8.3 yards per attempt) with four touchdowns and one interception for a 125.0 QB Rating. That’s just terrific to see him progress as well as he has and it gives us hope that this season will once again be a successful one despite us still having a long way to go.

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The offense is now speedy as O’Brien had envisioned and I knew things were looking up when the first drive that Watson led was a scoring one that was only four plays and lasted only 1:58. It was a hand-off to Lamar Miller for two yards to the left for a touchdown. Watson would go on to throw four touchdowns — two to Will Fuller, one to DeAndre Hopkins and Miller with a receiving touchdown.

But perhaps the most important one was the one he ran in HIMSELF for the one yard that was needed for the touchdown. He did his own rendition of the Lambeau Leap across the Texans wall and did some dancing with Toro in the end zone. It was, of course, all tasteful but certainly an indicator that he was having fun out there. By then, the score of the game was 30-14 and the Titans were already staring at a likely loss.

Although he went deep left to Hopkins late in the first half which caused safety Kevin Byard to grab his only pick of the game, he still did what it took to help this team win this game. He’s a gamer, a baller, a shot-caller and knows what the hell he’s doing out there!

Because of all what I said, I believe Watson is my early Rookie of the Year candidate and I say this without any sense of equivocation. Who’s he up against? Leonard Fournette, John Ross and T.J. Watt? He’s still ahead of those guys in the sprint to the finish line! You can metaphorically say that Watson is looking over his shoulder for Fournette but in the end I think it’s going to be between these two guys.

Next: Three reasons to trade Tom Savage NOW

And you know what? I think he’ll win it because if a QB is in contention, they almost always win it, especially if they’ve made a tremendous impact to the team like Watson has. We’ll see but I KNOW I’m calling this one right.

Go Texans.

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