Houston Texans: 3 questions that need to be answered during the bye week
Can Deshaun Watson play beyond 2017 Watson?
The feeling after the 2017 NFL Draft was that the Houston Texans got the biggest steal by drafting Watson. Why would two quarterbacks be taken ahead of a player thought to be the best quarterback in the NFL Draft? And last year, before he got hurt, Watson showed why he was the best quarterback taken and the Texans were looked at as winners.
Fast forward to this year and it seems like the answer is being shown. Mitchell Trubisky has the Chicago Bears atop the NFC North while Patrick Mahomes II appears to be the early frontrunner for MVP. Watson meanwhile, has had a tough struggle.
Perhaps because of how he was being cautiously used by the coaching staff, Watson wasn’t himself in the first three games, which all resulted in losses. Then he leads the team to three straight wins to even out the record. All of this while dealing with punishment after punishment by the defenses. While some fault is on the offensive line, most of it is on him for putting himself in that scenario to get hurt.
While we saw a courageous performance against the Cowboys and Bills with Watson dealing with bruised ribs and a long bus trip to Jacksonville leading to a win, there was an uncertainty that Watson was having a sophomore jinx or that he was still struggling to regain himself.
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The last two games gave us glimpses of Watson’s brilliance from last season. Not only did he throw five touchdowns against the Dolphins, but he also had two touchdowns in the win against Denver. Even more so, he seems to have gotten better with how to avoid being pressured and leading to big plays.
I recall the play where he was about to be sacked for a safety. Yet, he somehow found Lamar Miller for a big first down late in the game. If that had occurred in the first three weeks, Watson would be sacked and two points go to Denver.
With Watson starting to emerge like himself again, he’s going to need to get fully rested and ready to go for the second half. While it seems unlikely he will win the MVP this year, he can continue to embark on a football career that can live up to Dabo Swinney’s proclamation of being the Michael Jordan of the NFL. We know what he can do with the football. But the question now becomes can he go beyond what he is capable of doing.
It’s going to be exciting to see what he does in the second half. If he continues to build and play at a level that all Texans’ quarterbacks before him wished they could’ve played like, then we’ll have an answer to the third question on the table.