Sports
Cleveland Is Throwing Watson A Parade For Being Merely Mediocre
By Michael Yappaport, . BSN Network. Satire.
CLEVELAND, OH -- The Cleveland Browns are feeling good about Deshaun Watson, and if you need a moment with that sentence, take it.
Watson, who cost the franchise a collection of first-round picks that could have stocked a small college conference, has shown what sources close to the organization are calling "late-game awareness," which is the football equivalent of a surgeon being praised for remembering which patient he is operating on.
The Browns sit at 2-1, a record that, in Cleveland, carries the emotional weight of a ticker-tape parade and a bronze statue outside the stadium. Fans who have watched this team dissolve quarterbacks like antacids in water are now daring to use words like "future" and "stability," two concepts that have historically fled the city the moment anyone said them out loud.
"He's finding his footing," said head coach Kevin Stefanski, with the serene calm of a man who has made peace with everything. "We like what we're seeing in those late-game situations." He then paused for longer than any coach should pause after a compliment.
To be clear about what is being celebrated here: a quarterback the organization paid the kind of money that makes accountants leave the room is being credited with late-game performances. Not a Super Bowl. Not a division title. Not a single fourth quarter that would make someone in another city look up from their phone. Late. Game. Performances.
Former Browns fan and current licensed therapist Gerald Okafor said he watched Sunday's game from his car in his own driveway because he could not emotionally commit to the couch. "I was encouraged," he said, "in the same way I'm encouraged when my car starts in February. It's a low bar, but it's my bar and I'm keeping it."
The NFL trade market has never produced a more expensive exercise in hoping for the league average. Cleveland sent away picks the way a man cleans out his savings account for a boat and then spends three years convincing himself he likes being on the water.
Watson, for his part, said he feels comfortable, which is a sentence that cost more per word than any recorded human utterance.
The Browns are 2-1. Deshaun Watson completed some passes in the fourth quarter. Cleveland is encouraged.
Everybody else is just relieved they don't have to talk about it yet.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/50065872/cleveland-browns-quarterback-situation-deshaun-watson-shedeur-sanders-tnf