Game Overview...
The Texans took a quick 3-0 lead, then the Browns struck right back with a TD to take a 7-3 lead. The Texans then outscored the Browns 42-7 from there and walked away with a huge win.
All pregame, all I heard from the analysts was about the vaunted Browns defense and how great they were. Well...
This game goes to prove that the NFL axiom is still very much true...QB is everything.
Houston goes on to face ___(?)...we don’t know yet since, as of this writing, the Buffalo-Pittsburgh game got moved to Monday night. Likely, the Texans are headed to Baltimore.
The Browns go to the offseason with Deshaun Watson as their QB...and knowing that their idiotic trade for Watson is part of what helped build this Texans team that just paddled their ass. How can they take their future seriously now?
*Note any fractional numbers in parentheses (4/2) or (2/3), etc., are a 'split' stat on our definition of a 'quality start' (or not) marker on a player -- using 14 PPR points in a game for RB-WR-TE and 21 for a QB ...point levels that are good/productive/well above average starts for a Fantasy week. Trying to identify trends, consistency (or not) in players we might not normally realize.
A (3/2), for example, means: 3 times the player hit at/above the QUALITY mark, and 2 times they did not (this current season).
Player Dynasty/Fantasy Notes...
-- I don’t need to try to add on more C.J. Stroud (16-21 for 274 yards, 3 TDs/0 INT) superlatives. I would only note two things, after watching and rewatching this game:
1) My heart is filled with joy thinking about what David Tepper had to be feeling watching Stroud in this game specifically. But also, I’m never going to forget all the football scouts and analysts who swore Bryce Young was the best QB prospect in the 2023 NFL Draft...try as they might to now say they all secretly knew Stroud was better.
I will also never forget that QB analysis company, can’t remember who they are and I don’t care, who developed that new testing/grading system for QBs and that was all the rage last March/April on how accurate they were at judging QB prospects with their ‘system’ – and how Bryce Young scored amazing and C.J. Stroud had issues by comparison...and I will not forget all the football analysts who saw that scoring differential from a company that they had no idea how they were measuring anything but they latched onto the QB scores and further pushed Bryce and mocked Stroud.
Bryce Young over C.J. Stroud could go down as the most monumental mistake in recent football scouting history and 99%+ of teams/scouts/analysts/fans made the error.
2) This performance likely pushes Stroud to a definitive top 3 Dynasty QB overall, top 5 Redraft 2024 easily now. Not even debatable.
-- Nico Collins (6-96-1/7) played two of the best games of his career in the Texans last two games. Everyone is hopping on the Nico bandwagon now...but I just want to caution you that this is all happening without Tank Dell – Stroud’s #1 WR.
I’m not suggesting Nico is ‘nothing’ going forward when Dell returns...I’m just saying that be careful not to sell out for Nico in Dynasty right now – what we’re seeing now won’t be full reality when Tank is back.
And it’s not great news for Tank to be the far-and-away #1 target/producer...he will be the #1 guy, but Nico will have his time in the sun as well.
-- John Metchie (3-44-0/3) looks like he’s pushing past Robert Woods (1-11-0/2) to be the #3 WR right now...#2 if Noah Brown (0-0-0/1) is gonna be out hurt.
-- Brevin Jordan (1-76-1/1) had one simple short pass that got turned into a 76-yard TD...a nice play by Jordan BUT, like always, and like I said to my friend I was watching the game with right after it happened – that was Jordan’s likely first/only target even after showing this ability...and it was Jordan’s lone target of the game. He’s just a random backup to Dalton Schultz.
-- Dameon Pierce (3-0-0) got a few relief touches here but man does he look bad. He’s totally lost his momentum from 2022. He lost the starting job 2023 midseason. He’s starting to lose being ‘the future’ at RB for Houston as well.
-- Joe Flacco (34-46 for 307 yards, 1 TD/2 INT) should probably be retained and allowed to fight Deshaun Watson for the 2024 starting job, but that likely won’t happen. Flacco (now a free agent) can just sit out and wait for a sure-thing opportunity off a QB injury that occurs in 2024...like he did in 2023, only now Flacco will be in demand.
Speaking of Watson...shouldn’t the GM that orchestrated that fiasco to acquire him be fired...immediately? The deal has not only done nothing for the Browns, but the team they traded with used the assets acquired to build a team that just embarrassed the Browns in the playoffs.
The Deshaun Watson deal, so far, has worked out to be...
Deshaun Watson
FOR
Will Anderson, Tank Dell, Kenyon Green (starting OL) and they have the Browns 1st-round pick in and 5th-round pick in 2024 still to go.
How do you not fire the GM?
-- One of the best things to come from the 2023 season, for the Browns, was the full breakout for David Njoku (7-93-0/11). A great 2nd-half of the season...happening once Deshaun Watson was gone. Another side effect/problem with the Watson trade going forward, much less the huge salary cap space he’s taking up...will Njoku fade back with Watson returning as starter next season?
-- David Bell (8-54-0/8) is showing signs of life...finally. The past two games, Bell has averaged 6.0 rec. (6.0 targets), 61.0 yards, and 1.0 TDs per game.
Bell is a ‘good hands’, reliable WR that could be the #2 WR preference for targeting in 2024. He’s been mostly a ghost for two seasons but is finally showing some hope. He was a great WR for Purdue but had a terrible Combine/Pro Day set of speed/agility numbers (4.65 40-time, 7.14 three-cone) and fell from 1st-round hopeful to 3rd-round reality...but, as we are all now learning as scouts of things – the measurables don’t matter as much anymore, as hands/routes/smarts do for WRs. Bell can be a kinda-sorta Amon-Ra St. Brown for the Browns (not as good as ARSB or in as good a spot).
-- Jerome Ford’s (9-17-0, 4-15-0/4) season ended on a whimper with another dud game here, despite being ‘the starter’. He should be the full starter off the bat for the Browns next year while we wait to find out if/when Nick Chubb is going to be available, and whether or not a returning Chubb will have any hope/juice for 2024 contribution or will it be a lost/take it slow/rehab-ish type of season.
-- Browns LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (9 tackles, 4 TFLs) was 4th in the NFL in TFLs (20) and then went out and had 4 TFLs in this game. A nice season heading into possible early contract extension talks in 2024.
-- One last note... The Browns-DST was so egregiously pushed as ‘great/elite’ by football analysts over-and-over all season, because they had a hot start (due to schedule) and had nice season metrics, etc., (due to schedule) but they were exposed for the frauds they were here. It makes me think/crow...
Where was Myles Garrett (3 tackles) in this game? He had no impact against a wobbly Texans O-Line and Houston dropped 45 points on them (‘only’ 31 offensive). I keep railing on how utterly useless these edge rushers are when NFL teams keep drafting them so highly and pay them gargantuan contracts for them to have 1-2 impacts per game but leave 30-40-50+ snaps worth of problems behind on their constantly failed pass rush efforts.
Garrett had 14.0 sacks, 4 FF, 3 PDs, 30 QB hits and probably 500+ snaps where he rushed the backfield and never got close to the QB but left behind a giant hole to run plays through. He’s still working through a 5-year, $125M contract with $100M guaranteed. About a million to two million dollars a sack it will work out to be.
Garret still has $36M of deal left to be paid. Deshaun Watson only has $201M owed. The Browns are stuck with Watson until at least 2026 since they gave him the single worst contract in the history of football...fitting for the single worst trade in the history of the game.
Snap Counts of Interest:
69 = Cooper
63 = E Moore
43 = D Bell
43 = Ford
28 = K Hunt
36 = Schultz
35 = Metchie
32 = Collins
23 = Brevin J
20 = X Hutchinson
15 = R Woods
05 = Noah Brown
33 = Singletary
06 = D Pierce
