It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We start off with the quarterbacks. I continue my portion of the rundown of the position with a quarterback whose offseason went about as poorly as humanly possible. Do we even want Deshaun Watson on our fantasy football teams? If so, he’s the steal of the draft. But the NFL might have other things to say about it.
2021 Deshaun Watson ADP & AAV:
Average Draft Position: QB15, Pick 127
Average Auction Value: $1.8 (T-QB14)
Deshaun Watson Statistics
| Year | G | GS | Att | Comp | Comp% | Yds | TD | Int | Att/G | Comp/G | Yds/G | TD/G | INT/G |
| 2020 | 16 | 16 | 544 | 382 | 70.2% | 4823 | 33 | 7 | 34.0 | 23.9 | 301.4 | 2.1 | 0.4 |
| 2019 | 15 | 15 | 495 | 333 | 67.3% | 3852 | 26 | 12 | 33.0 | 22.2 | 256.8 | 1.7 | 0.8 |
| 2018 | 16 | 16 | 505 | 345 | 68.3% | 4165 | 26 | 9 | 31.6 | 21.6 | 260.3 | 1.6 | 0.6 |
| Year | 4 PPTD | 6 PPTD | 4 PPTD/G | 6 PPTD/G | Year | Rush | Ru Yds | Ru TD | YPC | Ru Att/G | Ru Yd/G | |
| 2020 | 369.3 | 435.3 | 23.1 | 27.21 | 2020 | 90 | 444 | 3 | 4.9 | 5.6 | 27.8 | |
| 2019 | 320 | 372 | 21.3 | 24.80 | 2019 | 82 | 413 | 7 | 5.0 | 5.5 | 27.5 | |
| 2018 | 331.7 | 383.7 | 20.7 | 23.98 | 2018 | 99 | 551 | 5 | 5.6 | 6.2 | 34.4 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | aDOT+ | Y/A | TD% | INT% | Sacks | Yds/Sack |
| 2020 | 4790 | 8.76 | 1.03 | 8.87 | 6.1% | 1.3% | 49 | 5.98 |
| 2019 | 4406 | 8.90 | 0.72 | 7.78 | 5.3% | 2.4% | 44 | 5.84 |
| 2018 | 4343 | 8.60 | 0.42 | 8.25 | 5.1% | 1.8% | 62 | 6.19 |
aDOT+ is the quarterback’s average depth of target compared to the league average
2021 Deshaun Watson Fantasy Football Overview:
Deshaun Watson is an exceptional football player. In 2020, at age 25, he stood alongside Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes as the only guys to throw for 4,500 yards and 30 touchdowns. His 4,823 yards led the entire NFL, in fact. And he did it on the tenth-most pass attempts in the NFL, while throwing to Brandin Cooks and a cast of jamokes, which speaks to how efficient Watson was with the football in 2020. Waston also ranked fifth in quarterback rushing yards (not including Taysom Hill), and he kicked in three rushing touchdowns. There’s no doubting Deshaun Watson’s talent, especially with what matters for fantasy football.
At the conclusion of the 2020 season, there was a Mic’ed up where J.J. Watt and Watson walked off the field together in their last game, and the two apologized to each other for wasting a year of their career. It’s crazy the path that both have taken since then. Watt is a Cardinal, and it’s likely we never see Watson in a Texans uniform ever again.
This is where things get tricky with Deshaun Watson. He has nearly two dozen sexual assault allegations hanging over his head. And all those allegations came to light after he (in no uncertain terms) said that he didn’t want to play for the Texans any longer. I’m not suggesting any sort of correlation; I’m just saying that the road to Deshaun Watson playing even a single snap this season for the Houston Texans is an extremely long and winding one.
2021 Deshaun Watson Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Deshaun Watson Auction Value: $0
Draft Ranking: Want rankings tailored to your league settings in a Beersheet? (coming early July)
I’m not touching Deshaun Watson anywhere. It’s weird to say about a guy I have around QB10 right now, but I don’t want Watson. Even if he plays this season, I’m left rooting for a guy with about two dozen sexual assault allegations against him. It’s fine if you want to see the process play out. But, I’ve made my feelings known. The NFL has no precedence for this, with Ben Roethlisberger’s similar situation involving much, much fewer women. Still, he ended up suspended six games for his violation of the personal conduct policy. Reminder to everyone who wants to see the process play out: Ben Roethlisberger was never charged with anything, he settled with the women. There’s no criminal process that needs to play out for the NFL to bring the hammer down on Watson.
This will be a true test of how “woke” the NFL has become. Will they suspend a major star over this? They probably should, as the Ray Rice incident embarrassed them so thoroughly they created a whole new designation for just this situation (“Commissioner’s Exempt List”).
If this is something you can look past, then Watson represents a screaming value. Even if you set aside his torrent debut in 2017, he’s been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, in real life (third-highest pro-football-reference Approximate Value score) and in fantasy football (third-most fantasy points per game). He’s QB15 off the board right now, going at 106 overall. I’ve been in several drafts where people’s outlook on Watson aligns with my own and they don’t take the plunge.
Best Case Scenario:
Deshaun Watson plays football for the Houston Texans. Nothing is promised beyond that.
Worst Case Scenario:
Deshaun Watson does not play football in 2021. No jokes here.
Check out all our 2021 player profiles as we publish them, here.
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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
(Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Deshaun_Watson_%2845222907484%29.jpg under CC BY-SA 4.0)
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