The 11-game suspension for QB Deshaun Watson in 2022 was as much a punishment for his team, the Cleveland Browns, as it was for him. The timescale allowed him to return with six games to go in the year, which meant he would earn an accrued season and his new five-year, $230 million contract would not toll, meaning essentially that the contract would start in 2024.
The NFL originally handed down an indefinite suspension of at least a full season, but it was reduced upon appeal. Even though he was able to return last year, he found that he did so as a changed man—in his own words.
He called it “a situation where I just had to lock in on myself, channel and really know who I’m surrounding myself with and just really who’s going to be there and support me even when I’m at my lowest point and the last few years were definitely my lowest point in my life”, via ESPN.
Watson was suspended because the NFL found accusations of sexual misconduct credible. He has never admitted to this kind of wrongdoing, though he has conceded under oath during his numerous trials that he had some sexual encounters with massage therapists he employed that he described as consensual.
It’s then no surprise than the manner in which he described the changes within him centered on how he can protect himself. You can’t change as a result of an experience—or a string of experiences—that you deny having taken place. In his mind, or at least out of his mouth, he did nothing that he should have been suspended for.
“But that’s part of life. I just grow from it, I learn from it”, he said about these changes in which he shrunk his circle and surrounded himself with those who would support him under any circumstance. “I continue to move forward and push forward and continue to show my real character, my real personality and who I am”.
Who he is as an athlete is a three-time Pro Bowler who has put up some very good numbers in his time and took some Houston Texans teams to the playoffs, even winning a playoff game during the 2019 season. He’s only played less than a season and a half since then.
And not very successfully, either. He put up impressive numbers statistically in 2020 with the Texans, accumulating stats in garbage time en route to a 4-12 record. And he went just 3-3 in his six games at the end of last season following his trade to the Browns, posting the0 worst touchdown rate of his career and second-worst interception rate.
“The whole situation changed me”, Watson said of the suspension and of going through the accusations. His story “has been overshadowed”. Unfortunately in the realm of professional sports, success on the field can bury a lot of negative stories off it, so if he wants his life back, he needs to just start winning.
