Yes. Day one, he was the "anybody but Duras" candidate. Worf easily took the guy in a fight on a few occasions. He later upended the Dominion War effort by throwing ships into bad plans that would be blamed on Martok.
He pulls back an entire fleet after Worf quotes Kaylee’s Kahless to him, which I felt demonstrated how Gowron deep down values honor.
After that though he decides to give Martok the Flavius Aetius treatment, despite how slimy it is.
Edit: kahless
Edit 2: forgot to agree with you! Ultimately he’s very cartoonish because he goes so hard with his lines and stares. Especially when he threatens to paint the future with blood if the council supports Duras’ heir.
I think its the ratings of all the episodes. Probably from imdb. I thought it was season.episode at first too, and assumed it must be counting the first two seasons of ds9 as seasons 8 and 9 since tng only goes up to 7, but that doesn't make sense for a number of reasons.