Deshaun Watson Week 1 Outlook - Bengals at Browns

By Derek Brown (FantasyPros), Sun, Sep 10th 2023, 12:05pm EDT

When the curtain lifts on the 2023 season, will we see the Deshaun Watson who was a top-five fantasy QB in each of his three full seasons as a starter with the Texans, or the Deshaun Watson who was thoroughly unimpressive in six late-season starts for the Browns last year? Logic suggests that we should lean toward the larger sample size as the better predictor of future performance, but it would be hard to fault anyone who insisted on getting a "show me" game from Watson before plugging him into a lineup or using him in DFS. Watson will face a Bengals pass defense that had the third-best opponent passer rating and allowed the third-fewest fantasy points to quarterbacks last season. Consider Watson a high-end QB2 this week.