Deshaun Watson Deserves Hype, but He’s Not a Transcendent QB Prospect

The market for franchise quarterbacks is simple: Bad teams typically lose because of their passing game, as that portion of football is emphasized when playing from behind. When down late in games, the exposure of how good or bad a franchise’s quarterback is becomes very clear.

Teams with worse records are rewarded with higher draft picks in the following draft. The NFL is also a league that is built off of acquiring favorable contracts, as they have a hard cap, instead of simply acquiring overall talent.

When a player like Chase Daniel, who will likely be the Philadelphia Eagles’ third-string quarterback at some point in 2016, has an average salary of $7 million per year, it’s evident that rookie contracts assist in maximizing the value of young quarterbacks, the most expensive and influential position in the sport, more than any other role on the field.

This creates a cycle in the draft world. Bad teams generally need a quarterback, and bad teams generally draft a quarterback high. This year, the prized jewel is Deshaun Watson of Clemson.

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In an early mock draft, Steve Palazzolo of Pro Football Focus had Watson coming off the board with the first overall pick. So did Walter Cherepinsky of Walter Football. Chad Reuter of NFL.com named Watson as his first overall player on his top-100 board this past May. You can add popular names like Josh Norris of Rotoworld and Chris Burke of Sports Illustrated as draft writers who think highly of the Tiger passer.

For fanbases of teams like the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, who both have questions at the quarterback position and are not favored to win a single individual game, at least by Vegas’ standards, in 2016, focus is already being set to the incoming true junior passer.

Often, though, the media crowns a top-five quarterback too early. There are plenty of passers, like Logan Thomas, Jevan Snead, Jake Locker and Matt Barkley in recent years, who have been anointed as “the next big thing,” just to fall short during their final collegiate seasons. On the other hand, quarterbacks like Blake Bortles, Robert Griffin III and Cam Newton had meteoric rises to vault them into the top-five conversation.

Since Sam Bradford was drafted first overall in 2010, before Watson was a freshman in high school, only three quarterbacks who were drafted within the first five picks of their respective drafts actually entered their final seasons with that type of hype: Andrew Luck, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota.

Because of the desperation to find the next savior passer, which has led to a high boom-bust rate of those named “top-five …

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