Matthew Stafford throws a football as if his arm, his entire frame, was built to do just that.

It’s beautiful.

(It sure would have been nice to see it in a game, but Stafford didn’t play in Saturday night’s preseason “game” against the Texans. The level of play in the Texans’ 30-23 victory was so below that of a regular season contest that the NFL should give me everybody’s money back.)

Though he is listed at just 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, the 31-year-old appears to be bigger and taller, because the ball jumps out of his hand as if propelled by manmade explosives.

He is a talented professional quarterback, a durable decade-long starter. And yet, he has barely made a dent in the NFL.

Two years ago, this month, Stafford agreed to a new contract with a $50-million signing bonus that at the time was the biggest contract in NFL history and put him among the top five all-time in career earnings.

When it comes to wins, championships, Super Bowls, Stafford isn’t even an average quarterback.

Texans’ offensive assistant T.J. Yates, who started 10 games in his career, has more playoff wins than Stafford, who is on a streak of 128 consecutive starts.

In 10 seasons, Stafford has more than 38,000 passing yards, 237 touchdown passes, and seven 4,000-yard passing seasons. But zero division championships, zero playoff wins.

Amazingly, he has been selected to only one Pro Bowl.

Hungry for excitement, desperate to find a quality signal-caller, the Lions drafted Stafford No. 1 overall in 2009 with high hopes and expectations. His has been a career of little or nothing, with little or nothing to show for it aside from personal wealth.

The no-less-desperate Texans traded up to draft Watson a couple years ago.

A decade from now, will Watson’s resume include a slew of playoff wins? A Super Bowl trip? A championship?

Only if the Texans start operating like a championship organization.

We know Watson is a winner. I can’t imagine his career will turn out to be anything like Stafford’s, but much of that will not be up to him.

For now, let’s not debate whether Watson or Stafford is the better quarterback. They bring different skills, talents and leadership styles.

Those differences don’t matter as much as what they have to work with and how the teams they play for are built. The bungling Texans are just as capable of wasting a talented QB as the Lions.

While the Texans’ chosen organizational structure of not having a designated general manager might be fundamentally flawed, having the wrong general manger isn’t much better.

If you let the Texans tell it, the wrong general manager was in the NRG Stadium press box Saturday night. But Brian Gaine, who the Texans fired in July, attended as a scout for the Buffalo Bills.

We rip the Texans because they deserve it. As Bill O’Brien says, until they win something of significance, they can’t complain. (Though that hasn’t stopped them.)

As poor of an operation as we see through our up-close-and-personal view of the Texans, the Lions have been worse. They are one of the nine teams with fewer wins than Houston since the Texans joined the league in 2002.

The Texans have 121 wins in that span, to the Lions’ 100. And that doesn’t include three playoff wins on Houston’s ledger, while the Lions’ last playoff victory came in 1991, four years before Watson was born.

Stafford’s best years were wasted. He had a likely Hall of Famer receiver in his prime, Calvin Johnson, but that wasn’t enough.

Instability — Darrell Bevell, who is in his first season in Detroit, is Stafford’s fourth offensive coordinator — didn’t help, but just poor management, bad drafts and a disjointed plan have all played a part in the lack of success.

Detroit didn’t manage to put a good enough defense and running game around Stafford for any sustained success. The closest they came was in 2014 when they had a playoff game stolen from them in Dallas.

The Lions aren’t the first franchise to waste a talented quarterback. Their situation stands out because this QB didn’t flame out. Stafford has put up some good numbers. Taking advantage of the throwing era, the former Highland Park star, is third all-time in passing yards per game.

Among quarterbacks without a playoff win on their resume, Stafford leads in career passing yards, and by midseason he will pass Sonny Jurgensen to lead that group in touchdown passes.

Big numbers, few that meant anything.

It was like what Watson did Saturday night. He led the Texans to a touchdown on the only drive he played, looking sharp, as the Texans’ offensive line looked like it was ready to block its way to a Super Bowl against the Lions reserves.

Watson completed 5-of-7 passes for 60 yards with a touchdown to his Hall-Of-Fame-tracking wideout DeAndre Hopkins. At least entering his third season, Watson’s meaningless numbers are in fake games, not the real ones.

I bet Stafford wishes he could go back and do it all over again with a better organization.

jerome.solomon@chron.com

twitter.com/JeromeSolomon