Why are people so afraid that Deshaun Watson may actually be good?

Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson will not have a chance to work with quarterback Deshaun Watson at the Senior Bowl. It’s time for people to get over it.

The coaching staff for the Cleveland Browns is in Mobile, Ala., this week working with the players involved in the annual Senior Bowl.

But rather than focusing on the players that are in town preparing for Saturday’s modified exhibition game, much of the attention has been on one player who is not there: Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson.

Watson, a junior, would normally not have received an invite but is eligible to join in the fun because he has already graduated from Clemson. (Which seems like it would be another in a long list of positive check marks in his favor.) Senior Bowl officials invited Watson for the obvious reason of boosting ratings for the game as there are fewer college players with a higher profile than Watson right now.

But as soon as Watson turned down the invitation – something that is not only his right but a decision that just about every other player in his situation would make – the decision has been spun into a negative indictment of Watson.

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It started more than a week ago with Phil Savage, executive director of the Senior Bowl, who tried to spin the experience as being important to raising Watson’s visibility with NFL coaches and scouts.

“One of our selling points to the prospects themselves is this is not the end of your college career. That’s already taken place,” Savage said in published reports. “This is actually the lifting of the curtain of your pro career because this is the ultimate job fair for an aspiring professional football player.

“You’ll never have the ratio of 900 NFL people to watch 110 players because after this it’s 330 players at the combine, it’s hundreds that are draft eligible and then literally hundreds, if not a thousand or more, that are street free agents that still have some viability to get into the league.”

We’re going out on a limb here, but after embarrassing Ohio State and then beating Alabama for the national title, if there is anyone who is not familiar with Watson’s game then they probably will not have a job in the NFL for very long.

Peter King at MMQB joined in earlier today in his weekly column about Watson decision being a “terrific waste of an opportunity:”

"“Clemson’s Watson would logically have played for the South team, which will be coached by Hue Jackson and his Cleveland Browns’ assistants. If you’ve got faith in your ability, and you want to convince the coach of the team with the first pick in the draft—the team that desperately needs a quarterback and will almost certainly choose one high in the draft if it can’t trade for one or sign one before that—why would you not take the golden opportunity to work with Jackson for a week?"

"“The other two prime quarterbacks in the draft, Mitch Trubisky and DeShone Kizer, were not eligible, either because they weren’t seniors or because they hadn’t graduated. But a couple notes about the Watson miss: The Browns talked to him and asked him to play this week; he declined. Some of the other players who in the past declined a Senior Bowl invitation went much lower in the draft, fairly or unfairly, than they’d hoped—Geno Smith, Brett Hundley, Connor Cook, A.J. McCarron. I’m not saying the same fate will befall Watson."

"“And I will be clear: If the Browns fall in love with Watson, the fact that he didn’t participate in the Senior Bowl won’t matter. But what if it’s close? What if Jackson’s on the fence about one or more quarterbacks? Just feels like a big miss to me.”"

Watson may not be a lock to succeed in the NFL, but it is safe to say that he should never be mentioned in the same sentence with quarterbacks like Geno Smith, Brett Hundley, Connor Cook and A.J. McCarron.

Watson did everything and more asked of him during his three years at Clemson and there is little for him to gain by being in Mobile this week. There seem to be people who, for some reason, are so afraid that he may actually be the real deal that they are falling all over themselves to criticize him.

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If head coach Hue Jackson really does know quarterbacks, and the Browns do their homework properly, there is no reason why Watson not being at the Senior Bowl should impact their draft rating on him either way.

And if they still have any doubts after all that? Then all Jackson has to do is call Urban Meyer or Nick Saban, because we’re pretty sure they have a good idea of the kind of quarterback Watson is.