NFL.com Kick's Tom Brady Out of its 'Superstar Club,' Replaces Him with Deshaun Watson

There comes a low point in every NFL off-season. That point of no return your wagon train reaches through the vast, inhospitable wasteland between the draft and the start of training camp. When you’ve reached the deepest depth below sea level in football’s Death Valley, you know it. It’s not marked by any sign or GPS coordinate. You know it because the content on the football websites, TV shows and podcasts reaches the point of maximum clickbaity nonsense.

Welcome to the low point of 2019. Which is marked by this utter claptrap from Roger Goodell’s state-run media, NFL.com, where they list the all the players in their “Superstar Club.” WARNING: Scorching hot takes the temperature of a black vinyl car seat on the surface of the sun ahead:

Since 2015, I have dutifully served as the bouncer of The Superstar Club, a home for the game’s most special players. Every summer, I nominate a handful of standouts I predict will ascend to true superstar status in the coming season. Unfortunately, The Superstar Club is a zero-sum game. To add a player to the hallowed ranks, I must cast a former untouchable out amongst the plebeians. …

IN: Deshaun Watson, Houston Texans

Before the 2017 NFL Draft, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney warned franchises against passing on Watson, saying they’d be remembered like the NBA teams that passed on Michael Jordan. Two years in, Watson has all the look of the transformative presence the Texans believed they were getting with the 12th overall pick. Watson was a stud in his first full season as starter in 2018, accounting for 31 of Houston’s 38 offensive touchdowns and showing no ill-effects from the knee injury that prematurely ended his rookie season. We’re not ready to say that the Texans fixed their woeful offensive line in the offseason, but it honestly couldn’t get any worse. Add in a healthy Will Fuller and fellow superstar DeAndre Hopkins, and Watson is primed to take his game to an even higher level in Year 3.

OUT: Tom Brady, New England Patriots

Put down your pitchforks, Patriot Nation. Brady could throw 35 interceptions and get benched in Week 9 and he’ll still be the best quarterback who ever lived. But winning another Super Bowl in February didn’t change the fact that there were some signs of slippage in the soon-to-be 42-year-old’s game in 2018. He struggled with downfield accuracy and seemed skittish in the pocket at times. He missed open receivers. He looked … human. Now factor in the retirement of Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots’ meh remaining pass-catchers and New England’s run-heavy offensive philosophy. Brady can still get the job done, but do we really expect him to be an elite player at his position forever? That’s not possible, right? Right?

UPDATED MEMBERSHIP: Drew Brees, Andrew Luck, Patrick Mahomes, Cam Newton, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, Deshaun Watson, Carson Wentz, Russell Wilson.

Oh man! Get a load of the heat coming from that take! No one’s ever said that the days of Tom Brady’s greatness are over, have they? Have we ever heard anyone cite his age and use it as proof he can’t be good any more? Does anyone recall hearing that he’s about to fall off a cliff? That he can’t throw the deep ball like he used to? Or that he’s not as good as Brees, Luck, Mahomes, Newton, Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Ryan, Watson, Wentz or Wilson? Nope. Just this radioactive hot take.

If that thing gets anywhere near those flooded tanks, it’ll set off an explosion like a hundred Hiroshimas and we’ll be into a full meltdown. We need a volunteer to scuba in there, open the valves and drain this thing or this place will be uninhabitable for a thousand years. I raise my hand.

For starters, I have no beef with Deshaun Watson included among the Top 10 quarterbacks. He’s  good, promising young player who was 6th in the league with a Passer Rating of 103.1 and 7th in the league with 8.2 YPA. He had two fewer interceptions than Brady with three fewer touchdowns. I won’t give him a pass for the 62 sacks because while his offensive line played like five cardboard standups from the lobby of a movie theater, the Houston offense is particularly bad at slow-developing plays. And a large part of that is on the quarterback not being able to go through progressions, holding the ball to long and not being willing to do the smart thing by getting rid of it and bringing on the punt team. Still, is he a Top 10 QB? Absolutely.

But other than that?

“Tom Brady can’t throw the deep ball anymore” is such an old, played out, tired trope, I wonder how the people who repeat it haven’t died of the plague because they haven’t heard of the whole Germ Theory thing. It wasn’t true in 2001. It didn’t become true for a short time in 2007. It didn’t stop being true after Randy Moss was traded. It’s not true now. Do you want numbers? Pro Football Focus has numbers:

Would you prefer video? The internet has video:

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Or how about precise, scientific measurements?

But I’m not arguing the idea Brady is no longer a Top 10 quarterback. I’m embracing it. I’m grateful for it. To beat the Chernobyl metaphor to death, this type of absolute horseshit is the plutonium fuel rods inside the reactor of his psyche that generates his power going into every new season. This is what drives him well into his 40s to keep working, keep getting better and proving the doubters wrong. Not to mention what it does for me on an otherwise slow time for news. Thanks, haters, for making the boring part of the off-season worth living.