Everyone on Planet Earth with a pulse and a scintilla of interest in professional football knows the Browns Deshaun Watson experiment was unequivocally a complete disaster from start to finish. Hopefully it's finished, anyway, and if it wasn't, Jameis Winston's performance on Sunday in a stunning 29-24 victory over the Baltimore Ravens should be the final nail in the proverbial coffin.
Winston finished the game 27 of 41 for 334 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions (!) and a game-winning bomb to Cedric Tillman just after the two-minute warning to get the Browns their second victory of the season. In Winston's first career start with Cleveland, he joined Baker Mayfield, Trent Dilfer and Kelly Holcomb as the only Browns quarterbacks since 1990 to top 300 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions.
Sunday was the first time all season the Browns scored 20+ points in a game. They entered as the only team in the NFL without more than 20 points in a game, which means you can do the math on Watson (0-for-7) and Winston (1-for-1). Scoring 20 points isn't hard in the NFL with a competent offense and Winston did it the week after the Browns traded away his best receiver in Amari Cooper.
Want another low bar for an NFL offense to clear? Winston also became the first Browns quarterback to top 200 yards in a game this season. 200 yards!! Move the marker up to 300 yards and it gets really embarrassing. Winston (1-for-1) and Joe Flacco (6-for-7, including the playoffs) have just one game under center for Kevin Stefanski's offense without throwing for 300 yards. Watson started 19 games for the Browns following his trade and ensuing suspension until his season-ending Achilles tear last week and not once did he top 300 passing yards in a game.
The Browns set season highs for points (29), yardage (401) and pass yardage (321) with Winston under center on Sunday.
It's really difficult for me to blame Stefanski for this, even though until Watson went down he continued to -- almost inexplicably - back Watson as his quarterback. All along it felt like a mandate from ownership to force Watson onto the field despite it being painfully obvious he wasn't the same quarterback we saw in Houston, much less a league-average quarterback.
There's a lesson for ownership here: stay in your lane. The Browns were mired in mediocrity for decades. The Haslams came along, bought the team, listened to homeless guys for draft advice, finally stepped away from being heavily involved, let the football people do football things, and the Browns were good for a few years. They clearly pushed the Watson trade through, believing they could take the franchise to the next level.
It was an unmitigated disaster. 19 games of Watson playing poorly in exchange for multiple first-round picks that helped Houston reboot its own franchise. The money Watson got is an equally humiliating disaster of a mistake but -- cap ramifications aside obviously -- it's ultimately just cash being shelled out by really rich people on a wildly unnecessary expenditure.
What I really wonder is where the Browns would be if they'd simply stayed the course with Mayfield, or built a team around lower-profile quarterbacks like Flacco and Winston and let Stefanski run his system the way he wants to, without forcing some kind of allegedly Watson-ified scheme with a quarterback whose game doesn't even match up with what his own head coach wants to do offensively.
Jameis might not rally the Browns to the playoffs. The hole at 2-6 could certainly be too deep in a competitive AFC. But the Browns -- who have four losses by one score in which the defense gave up 21 points or less -- are now just two games out of the playoffs with some winnable games left on the schedule.
Winston's been around forever, but he's still just 30 years old and a former No. 1 overall pick. At the very least the Browns are finally likeable, for the first time since the last time Watson got hurt and they put a fun veteran quarterback under center in Flacco. If that isn't enough to call the dogs on the Watson experiment once and for all I have no clue what it would actually take.
The Lions are a truck
At some point Jared Goff's efficiency heater might cool off and maybe him throwing for 85 yards in a 52-14 win qualifies, but Goff could have done a lot more on Sunday if he needed to. He just didn't. He attempted only 15 passes, completed 12 of them and threw for three touchdowns, plus David Montgomery going 1-for-1 with a touchdown pass to Sam LaPorta meaning Detroit's run of more touchdowns than incompletions gets extended another week.
An opportunistic defense and a dominant run game, along with an A+ effort from special teams -- including a Khalif Raymond revenge return touchdown -- left Detroit with short fields -- the Lions had five TD drives of less than 30 yards, no other team has more than three in a game since 2000 -- and no need to chuck the ball around. It also meant the Lions moved to 6-1, the first time they've started a season this well since 1956.
The Titans were frisky early in this one, but the Lions didn't flinch and kept piling on, eventually scoring the second-most points in team history (55 on Thanksgiving in 1997 is the record) and Goff stepping aside for Hayden Hooker garbage time snaps.
Detroit's 225 yards is the fewest ever in a 50-point game by an NFL team. The Lions became the first team in the play-by-play era (1991) to score 30+ points in the first half of a game with less than 30 passing yards in the half. Detroit topped the 30-point mark for the fourth-straight game, tying the franchise record (also 1997).
Their touchdown (25) to incompletion (20) ratio over the last five games is the first time a team's pulled that off since the Jim Brown's Cleveland teams did it over the course of two seasons in 1959 and 1960.
What's stood out to me over this hot streak is how the Lions can beat you so many different ways. Goff has been laser sharp as of late and defending the myriad weapons at his disposal is virtually impossible. Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is completely locked in right now. He's dialing up stuff like a David Montgomery touchdown pass -- Montgomery has two career attempts now -- and doing it despite the Lions holding a double-digit lead.
Amon-Ra St. Brown caught a goal line touchdown completely uncovered, which should make zero sense, but Johnson is just seeing the matrix from a play-calling perspective and is two steps ahead of his defensive counterparts right now. Jahmyr Gibbs and Mongtomery -- a.k.a. Sonic and Knuckles -- are a lethal combo behind what might be the league's best offensive line.
Even without Aiden Hutchinson the defense has more than enough playmakers at all levels to flip the field at any moment. This is a special team on a special run for a city very deserving of some good football. Here's hoping it doesn't slow down any time soon.
National Tight End Day delivers
I'm not sure if National Tight End Day is recognized by anyone other than folks who watch football, but it's clearly a thing around the league because Sunday was a stupid explosion for the big guys who have morphed into elite pass catchers.
When Kyle Pitts -- 91 yards and two touchdowns -- is blowing up you know it's become a thing. Cade Otton -- nine catches, 81 yarsd and a pair of scores as Baker Mayfield's primary pass catcher -- nearly equalled him in the Falcons 31-26 key divisional victory. The combo also paid off REAL nice for this guy:
Tyler Conklin caught a touchdown from Aaron Rodgers in the Jets humiliating 25-22 loss to the Patriots. Both David Njoku and Mark Andrews found the end zone in the aforementioned Browns upset. Two of the Lions tight ends scored. Tucker Kraft -- 78 yards and a score on three catches -- and Evan Engram both found the end zone in a wild Packers/Jaguars game that saw Jordan Love exit with injury and the Packers still steal a win. Trey McBride went off for 124 yards on nine catches against the Dolphins in a rousing comeback by Kyler Murray and the Cardinals, which naturally featured some "Call of Duty" sniping from Kyler after.
Travis Kelce was already up to six catches, 61 yards and a score at halftime of his matchup against the Raiders. Adam Trautman (!!) went off for 85 yards and a score in the first half against Carolina. Dalton Kincaid found the end zone for the Bills and Zach Ertz was a fraction away from doing the same early for Washington.
You can't set a fantasy lineup with nothing but tight ends, which is too bad because it would have destroyed on Sunday.
What to do about the Jets?
October has been a disaster for Gang Green. It started with a loss to the Vikings in London, which was immediately followed by the Jets firing Robert Saleh and demoting Nathaniel Hackett from calling plays. Less than a week later, the Jets lost to the Bills on Monday night and promptly traded for Davante Adams. They followed that up with a loss the Steelers on Sunday night in Week 7, despite looking in control of the game at halftime.
Surely -- SURELY -- a matchup against the hapless Patriots in Week 8 would cure their ills.
*Narrator*: "It did not cure their ills."
Instead the Jets found themselves on the losing end of a 25-22 effort despite Drake Maye leaving with a concussion before halftime and hot-seat rumors swirling around Jerod Mayo just two months into his first year as Pats head coach. The Jets inability to win as massive favorites in Foxborough means they still haven't swept the Patriots since 2000.
The last time the Jets swept New England, they had more Super Bowl titles (1) than New England (0) and Aaron Rodgers was in high school. It's the third-longest streak of not sweeping a division opponent behind the Lions/Packers (25 years, ended in 2016) and the Browns/Steelers (32 years, still active somehow).
Rodgers is now 2-6 as a starter, the worst record of his career through eight games. He's thrown 12 passing touchdowns, the lowest number through eight games of his career. He's thrown seven interceptions, the second-worst mark through eight games of his career. His 85.1 passer rating eight games in ... also the worst of his career.
Jayden vs. Caleb
Talk about a game that initially didn't live up to the hype only to deliver in the biggest way possible. Just as I was thinking "man, maybe Bo Nix is live for OROY" No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams works the Bears down in position to beat No. 2 overall pick Jayden Daniels ... only to have his fullback (played by backup guard Doug Kramer) fumble.
Chicago got the ball back and Caleb took care of business, putting the Commanders in a position to lose a brutal game, sitting 50 yards away with two seconds left on the clock. And then ... Jayden. Bang.
Jim Nantz on the call is the cherry on the top, but what a freaking finish for the afternoon slate in a very fun Week 8 of the season.
You don't want to read too much into how a game ended after both offenses struggled for much of the afternoon, but Daniels is just THE GUY. Washington has their quarterback and he's just continuing to show the magic he flashed during his Heisman campaign at LSU last year. Running too much early is a concern given he already got hurt, but he was back out there this week dealing and found a way to pull off a stunning miracle that sent the sideline into absolute pandemonium.
The Bears have their quarterback too, by the way. It sure felt like Caleb was stealing a massive game from the Commanders and thrusting the Bears squarely into a heated NFC playoff race. They're not going to just go away or anything, but that's a brutal loss given the circumstances and simply needing to knock the ball down and call it a day.
Regardless, the top two picks in this year's draft are already delivering on the hype, adding to an already deep stable of young NFL quarterbacking talent.