Browns, Panthers competing for worst trade of all time

If Bryce Young makes it to the second pass attempt of the game on Sunday before turning the ball over, it will count as an improvement on Week 1.

And if he makes it all the way to the third pass of the second half without an interception? Also an improvement.

The bar is so low in Carolina that it's resting on the Bank of America Stadium turf.

It isn't exactly a shock that the same Panthers quarterback who endured a terrible rookie season had a disastrous start to his second year. Young quarterbacks sometimes struggle in the NFL.

But what makes the case of this particular quarterback so fascinating is how much the Panthers have invested in him. They traded four draft picks - two firsts, two seconds - and their top wide receiver, DJ Moore, to move up to the top pick in the 2023 draft to select Young out of Alabama.

To be precise, they moved up with the intention of selecting one of the available quarterbacks, not necessarily Young. Part of the lore of that trade is that the Panthers didn't actually know who they wanted to take first overall, despite handing that haul to the Chicago Bears. They settled on Young, the Heisman Trophy winner, disregarding concerns that he's undersized for an NFL quarterback, leaving the Houston Texans to select C.J. Stroud second overall. Stroud was the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year and led the Texans to the playoffs. Whoops.

It will probably not shock you to learn that the general manager who executed the trade, Scott Fitterer, was fired in January.

But what's done is done. Even if Young was awful last season, he's only 23 and has the potential to improve under new head coach Dave Canales, who successfully piloted the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' offense and helped another former Heisman winner, Baker Mayfield, discover his groove.

Except Young did all the same things in Week 1 against the New Orleans Saints that hobbled him as a rookie. He failed to recognize blitzes, taking four sacks and bailing out of the pocket repeatedly. He looked uncertain, which might be a result of throwing interceptions to begin each half. He was inaccurate, completing 13 of 30 passes on the day, when an ability to hit open receivers was supposed to be his key strength coming out of college. And his size was again an issue: Young struggles to let plays develop amid a collapsing pocket because he gets swallowed up when it does. He finished with a total quarterback rating (QBR) of 10.5 in Week 1, while his opponent, New Orleans' Derek Carr, finished at 84.9 (on the scale of 100).

The Young trade is already on the shortlist for one of the worst in NFL history, but fortunately for him and the Panthers, there's another present-day contender for the title.

The only quarterback with a worse QBR than Young in Week 1? The Cleveland Browns' Deshaun Watson with a 9.3.

Now in his third year with the Browns, Watson threw one touchdown and two interceptions and was sacked six times in a 33-17 drubbing by the Dallas Cowboys. Much like Young, he somehow looked worse than the numbers, only managing to do anything of note once Dallas built a 27-3 lead and eased off. He didn't complete a single pass that traveled at least 15 yards in the air.

During his Cleveland tenure, Watson has thrown 15 touchdowns to 11 interceptions and has been sacked 43 times in 13 games. That's replacement-level stuff. It would be bad enough if the Browns had simply given Watson his five-year, $230-million fully guaranteed contract via the free-agent market in 2022. But they also acquired Watson via trade and gave Houston six draft picks, including three first-rounders, just for the right to hand him that monster deal.

Houston moved many of those picks in further trades, but the resulting haul has netted something like five starters and another five rostered players, all for a quarterback who was never going to play in Houston again.

The Texans had no leverage in the trade market because Watson was in the midst of settling almost two dozen lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct. He ended up being suspended for 11 games and now has a new lawsuit against him alleging sexual assault. (The allegations are unproven and haven't been tested in court. The NFL announced Tuesday that it was investigating this new claim.)

So the Browns gave a huge trade package to Houston and an unprecedented-at-the-time contract to Watson for a player whose off-field behavior rendered him somewhere between undesirable and radioactive.

And they are, amazingly, stuck with him. The Browns have been essentially the same team in recent years with an assortment of random quarterbacks as they have been with Watson: great defense, plodding offense. But if they wanted to cut him before June 1 next year, they would have a staggering $172 million of dead money on the cap next season. (It would fall to $118 million if the release came after June 1, per Over the Cap.)

There is already media speculation that the latest allegations could even give the Browns a get-out-of-jail-free card if Watson is found to have violated the terms of his contract. But it seems early for that kind of talk: the wheels of NFL justice rarely turn fast.

Watson has at least been an excellent NFL quarterback before, so he could yet turn this around. He had an 83.7 QBR over four seasons in Houston, but in Cleveland, it's been 40.4. Last season, the only quarterbacks with a rating that low were Desmond Ridder, Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, and Young.

The first three lost their jobs. The last one is Watson's rival for the worst trade of all time.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.