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Sweet Sixteen: A comparison of Watson's first sixteen games with those of his contemporaries

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Hello my fellow Battle Red Blogites... Blogians? Whatever. First fanpost for me. You might know my work from the threads on this blog and from Redtube comments. On Sunday, one Deshaun Watson completed his sixteenth NFL start. That would be a season full of games for the young 23 year old football prodigy out of Clemson. I'd like to reflect on what we have seen thus far, and refract some of the brightness of his mind boggling numbers upon you Luddites.

Last year we all gazed in wonder at Deshaun. We Texan's fans marveled at a man on track for the greatest rookie season of all time. At least it felt that way. Then he came up lame after a hit playing against Seattle, and finished the job in practice the next week. Texan's fans drank bleach. Cried. Bemoaned our luck. Cursed Durga or whatever deity/deities one puts faith in. Alright. I'm going on too long. This is becoming one of those recipes where people tell you their life story before they tell you to put chives in a grilled cheese. I hate those people and am exceedingly happy chrome has a filter for that bull kitten.

The goal of this project is to compare Deshaun Watson's first sixteen games to any other quarterback's first sixteen games. Now I cannot reasonably compare him to every quarterback who has ever played sixteen games, so I have settled on a list of what most would consider to be the best quarterbacks of all times and took a look at how their first sixteen games went. I also took a look at some of greatest rookie quarterback seasons of all time, regardless of their later accomplishments, and compared them to Deshaun's first sixteen games. I took quarterbacks from recent years who had good rookie seasons, and some historical greats. I know there are serious flaws when comparing current NFL offensive play to that of the past. This is the best I could do, given that I don't want to spend my entire day devising a methodology. Keep in mind I compared the first sixteen games, sometimes spread out over 2-3 seasons since Deshaun had his first sixteen spread out over two seasons. Yes this it was tedious. Yes I did look at the game logs on pro football reference to get accurate numbers. Yes I probably kittened up at least one data input.

Here are Deshaun's stats through his first sixteen, and below that, the other quarterbacks chosen for this very scientific assessment:

QB

Comp.

Att.

Pct.

Yds.

Avg.

TD

Int

Rate

TD %

D. Watson

311

489

63.6

4088

8.4

36

15

101.7

7.4

T. Brady

265

416

63.7

2849

6.9

18

12

86.1

6.8

J. Montana

344

540

63.7

3674

6.8

26

15

88.0

4.8

P. Manning

326

575

56.7

3739

6.5

26

28

71.2

4.5

A. Rodgers

341

536

63.6

4038

7.5

28

13

93.8

5.2

B. Favre

376

576

65.3

3803

6.6

20

16

83.9

3.5

D. Marino

277

454

61.0

3766

8.3

36

9

105.7

7.9

J. Elway

196

405

48.4

2384

5.9

11

21

54.4

2.7

D. Brees

308

504

61.1

3173

6.3

15

15

76.8

3.0

S. Young

232

440

52.7

2579

5.9

10

24

55.3

2.3

W. Moon

259

450

57.6

3338

7.4

12

14

76.9

2.7

R. Wilson

252

393

64.1

3118

7.9

26

10

100.0

6.6

A. Luck

339

627

54.1

4374

7.0

23

18

76.5

3.7

R. Griffin

288

442

65.2

3508

7.9

22

7

99.4

5.0

B. Roethlisberger

219

327

67.0

3092

9.5

21

11

104.7

6.4

C. Newton

310

517

60.0

4051

7.8

21

17

84.5

4.1

C. Wentz

379

607

62.4

3782

6.2

16

14

79.3

2.6

M. Mariota

310

506

61.3

3702

7.3

23

15

86.4

4.5

P. Rivers

284

460

61.7

3388

7.4

22

9

92.0

4.8

D. Carr

348

599

58.1

3270

5.5

21

12

76.6

3.5

A. Dalton

300

516

58.1

3398

6.6

20

13

80.4

3.9

J. Winston

312

535

58.3

4042

7.6

22

15

84.2

4.1

I had a feeling watching Watson that we were seeing something special. Maybe something we had never seen before. It had the feel of Watt's second season, where I saw him do things I hadn't seen an interior defender do since Reggie White prowled the field. Now I can confirm that my eyes were not lying to me.

Watson is tied with Marino for first in TD's with 36. Watson has the third best QB rating, behind Marino and Roethlisberger. His 8.4 yds/att is only behind Roethlisberger's ridiculous 9.5. He comes in at a TD rate of 7.4%, second best to Marino's 7.9%.

Roethlisberger and Marino are the only two who compare to Watson. Watson clearly has had the better start than Big Ben, with a thousand more yards, 15 more TD's, and a 1.5% higher TD rate.

Marino provides a more interesting argument for having the better first season. He bests Deshaun in QB rating and TD rate. Deshaun bests him in yardage, completion percentage, and yds/att. In my mind, what puts Watson over the top, is his mobility. Watson has put up 537 rushing yards and 3 td's as a runner at 6.2 yds/att. Marino, 45 yards. 2 tds. at a Bradyesque 1.6 yds/att.

Any way you choose to interpret the data, Watson is clearly on track for greatness. The company he keeps breathes rarefied air. We are lucky as fans that we get to see this. Let's all enjoy it.

Sound off below if you agree, disagree, or are so enraged by this that you are ready to come to my house and kick my ass.

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