Deshaun Watson: It’s Happening?

Tea-leaf and palm reading is all there is to do during this time of year. Preseason games, which mean little anyways, haven’t even been played. We are all at the mercy of tweets, video clips, periscope glimpses between bites of lunch, and post-practice interview grazing. I ain’t interested in much of any of it right now, except for one thing: Deshaun Watson praising.

I’m in the camp that Tom Savage isn’t going to be good. With the way the team is set up, Houston would be better with Watson starting immediately. The team would be better in the future by knowing what they have in their rookie quarterback sooner rather than later. Although I believe this, I’ve gone on record that I don’t think Watson will start until midway through the season, if he starts at all this year. This would save Watson from the skull-scalding hellscape that is the first seven games of the Texans schedule.

But if it is going to happen, if Watson is going to play sooner rather than later, stuff like this is what we need to see now, before anything meaningful ever happens.

Bill O’Brien is an apostle of the ‘This league is tough, and it is so difficult for a rookie quarterback to play right away’ school of thought. Yet yesterday he leaned the other direction by saying, “Deshaun Watson is ahead of any rookie quarterback I’ve been around.”

To be fair, the only rookie quarterbacks O’Brien has been around are Kevin O’Connell (threw for a total of 23 yards in his career) and Tom Savage. It isn’t just OB who has said this, though. Ian Rapoport claimed that early on, just based on the initial returns, the Texans have absolutely loved what they have seen from Deshaun Watson.

Right now, it’s all fools gold. Yet, if we’re going to extrapolate into some glimmering future where Watson is a Week One starter, this is how it has to begin. Nice things and praise, followed by Tom Savage either being awful in the preseason or getting injured. Then Watson dominating the third preseason game and being named the starter before the season begins. It doesn’t mean much now. Maybe by September 10th, it will mean a whole lot more.