Watson burns Patriots with aggressiveness
HOUSTON – You knew it was Deshaun Watson’s night when he had the audacity to try it again.
After a 35-yard TD strike to Will Fuller V in the third quarter Sunday night was wiped out on a replay review, the smooth Texans quarterback came right back and threw another dime to Kenny Stills. Only better. And it counted.
It was the classic I’ll-showyou response.
Poor Jonathan Jones. The Patriots’ cornerback was burned for TDs on back-toback plays.
“Everything was just clicking,” Watson told USA TODAY Sports as he left NRG Stadium. “We knew where we wanted to take certain plays.”
And how. On the throw to Fuller, Watson dropped the football into a tight window, which the receiver hauled in over his shoulder, a step beyond the coverage. If only the ball didn’t pop loose when he crashed to the turf. On the doover, to Stills, Watson literally pointed to the spot in the deep left corner of the end zone where there was nothing but separation.
That was some serious flow, demonstrating much about the aggressive mindset the Texans’ leader brought with him to work to slay an NFL dragon. Watson (and his coach, for that matter, former Bill Belichick assistant Bill O’Brien) had come up short in previous attempts to topple King Brady and the Patriots but undoubtedly learned enough from those setbacks to realize that it wasn’t going to happen by playing scared.
No, to beat a bully as the Texans did in a prime-time thrashing that wasn’t as close as the final 28-22 score would indicate, they needed to pull out all of the stops. Aggressiveness was the ticket to improving to 8-4.
Who says the deep ball is a low-percentage pass?
Certainly not Watson, who proved it on his 2-for-1 TD heave. He flashed a quizzical look when I asked him if he had any reservations about coming back deep on 3rd-and-10 after the nearmiss on the previous play.
“The best, highest percentage ball is the deep ball,” he said. “Either it’s going to be a flag for a penalty or the receiver is going to catch it. So that was the biggest thing. I took a shot, and Kenny made a great play.”
O’Brien said it was an example of the leeway that Watson has to take advantage of the defensive look, to adjust accordingly. “This is what we believe it’s going to be,” O’Brien said. “But if it’s this, you can go to this. That’s kind of what happened.”
Watson, who threw for 234 yards and three touchdowns in his second-most efficient game of the season (140.7 passer rating), said it was a matter of recognizing the zero pressures the Patriots unleashed early in the second half, which led to the man coverage opportunities. He also professed some familiarity because the teams run similar systems – like O’Brien, Houston defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel came off the Belichick tree.
Yet the defining thread for the whole show – before a record crowd of 72,025 and on “Deep Steel Sunday” at that – came with the boldness to go for broke.
Watson caught a touchdown pass, too, a 6-yard score on a flip from star receiver DeAndre Hopkins off a double reverse. This sweet design of a play – Watson-to-Duke Johnson-to-Hopkins-to-Watson – had been in the works for a while and maybe even saved especially to trip up the Patriots, who fell to 10-2.
How dare you? They took the dare from the 6-yard line early in the fourth quarter, the result blowing up the margin to 28-9 – too much, ultimately, on this night for even Tom Brady to engineer a comeback from.
When the call came in, Watson wondered whether the play they had practiced extensively would work under the bright lights.
“It was funky at first,” he said. “I wanted to check out of it. I was like, ‘Nah, this is the perfect time. We got here. If we don’t run it now, we’ll probably never run it. Me and Hop will make something work.’ ”
Audacity worked. On a night when aggressiveness ruled, not only did the play work, it proved to be the perfect exclamation point for a statement victory.