Around the AFC North: Deshaun Watson has setback; Steelers (poor play) and Ravens (Zay Flowers injury) limp into playoffs

Some major injury news, and an update on Pittsburgh just being bad.

The Cincinnati Bengals season is over, and only 50% of the AFC North are still alive, with only half of them going to make it to the next round since the Baltimore Ravens will host the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Cleveland Browns won’t be playing, but they received an update on Deshaun Watson’s injury.

Steelers limp into NFL Playoffs

The Steelers seemed poised to win the AFC North after defeating the Ravens in Week 11 to improve to 8-2 on the season. They were still in the running for the No. 1 seed and everything. They went on to only win two more games while losing five, including the last four games of the season, to allow Baltimore to secure the AFC North crown.

This team is currently constructed to win defensively, and they hope their offense can do enough to win games. Recently, the wheels have been coming off in that respect as Russell Wilson has struggled at quarterback as the winter has come along, and wide receiver George Pickens is capable of imploding at a moment’s notice.

Now that they are facing the Ravens again, the Steelers have to pull off a total offensive U-turn or hope their defense will come up huge against Lamar Jackson. In two games this season, the Steelers scored 18 points in their Week 11 victory and 17 in their Week 17 defeat.

They’ve failed to score over 20 points in any of their last four games while being dominated by the Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, and Philadelphia Eagles. They also looked hapless in Week 18 vs. a Bengals defense that just fired its defensive coordinator.

Not a good sign as they line up to face teams like that in the postseason.

Ravens without Zay Flowers?

The Ravens offense has been extremely efficient this season. The addition of Derrick Henry as running back has really opened things up to a pick-your-poison style of offense each week.

One player who has really benefited from that is wide receiver Zay Flowers. He had his first 1,000-yard season and made his first Pro Bowl.

Unfortunately, Flowers went down last Saturday in their win against the Browns, and it could keep him from playing in the Wild Card round and beyond.

“It’s not a season-ending injury,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh told media Monday. “So it’s just going to be day-to-day. Try to do everything he can do to get back as soon as he can, and we’ll see where that takes us.”

Adam Schefter thinks Flowers could return for the Divisional Round, but Pro Football Doc says otherwise.

Rashod Bateman did well in his absence, but that is a pretty big hit to the passing attack if Flowers can’t go as he accounted for 44 more targets than the next receiver. Bateman is the only receiver with over 15 targets on the the team.

Deshaun Watson has injury setback

Browns GM Andrew Berry revealed that Watson’s recovery from his Achilles injury could be substantially longer after he suffered a setback rehabbing:

“As we went through our normal player medical process, we did learn that he did have a setback in his Achilles recovery,” Berry told the media. “We don’t have all the details and everything yet, but it will obviously extend the recovery process for him. It is new information just learned in the past couple of hours, so I don’t have everything yet.”

This means Watson could very well:

A. Need another surgery

B. Miss a significant portion of next season, if not all of it.

Safe to say the team already needed to be prepared for a plan B, as Watson hasn’t been anywhere close to the player they expected. Now they can be a bit more blatant about finding a quarterback of the future.

The move wasn’t favorable at the time due to his alleged sexual assaults of over 20 women while he was with the Houston Texans, but some people are willing to turn a blind eye if you can play quarterback at a high level.

Unfortunately for Cleveland, he’s been as bad of a quarterback as you’ll see in the NFL since 2022. Now, all that seems left is for them to maneuver around the massive cap hit he’s carrying.