Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson no longer has a leg to stand on. Or to be more precise, he has one good one to stand on and one that won’t be useful for a while. The future former franchise quarterback suffered a likely torn Achilles during Cleveland’s loss yesterday. While that could mark the end of his tenure with the Browns, his teammates still very much have his back. In bend-over-backward fashion, they defended the accused sexual assault perpetrator not against criticism of his play but criticism of his character.
“Man does pretty much everything right”, Myles Garrett said of Deshaun Watson, via the Browns’ website, in remarkably unaware irony. “He’s been a model citizen through college and most of the pros. We can’t look down on a guy because of any mistakes on the field or anything off the field. We don’t have any more high ground to look down on a guy”.
Myles Garrett is, of course, the man who physically assaulted a fellow NFL player, who happens to be former Steelers QB Mason Rudolph. At the time, Browns QB Baker Mayfield was perhaps the only player who opted not to defend his actions.
The Browns subsequently parted ways with Mayfield while giving up their farm and the farms of their neighbors for Deshaun Watson. And they did so knowing he was facing literally dozens of civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. Not only did they give up three first-round picks and additional draft picks on top of that, they guaranteed his entire five-year contract.
If your math is mathing appropriately, you will have ascertained that Watson is under contract for two more years. But just because he is on the books doesn’t mean the Browns have to start him. Once again, for the third year in a row, they are now unable to start him. He missed 11 games in 2022 due to suspension for his “anything” off the field. Then he missed another 11 last year due to injury, and he will miss reportedly the remaining 10 in 2024. And the Browns have a sub-.500 record to show for it, 9-10. Hell of a swing, Jimmy.
Curiously, the Browns benched Jameis Winston as their backup just before this game, so Dorian Thompson-Robinson played against the Bengals. He exited the game with a thumb injury, though, and now his status is in question. But Winston made sure to defend Deshaun Watson all the same.
“I’m grateful that I had a chance to serve Deshaun [Watson], but I am very upset with the reaction to a man that has had the world against him for the past four years”, Winston said. “I would never pull on a man when he is down. But I will be the person to lift him up. All of us have unique experiences, all of us have circumstances, conditions and facts that we face every single day”.
The vast majority of us are not remorseless against accusations of sexual assault. And they don’t keep popping up for years because we don’t recruit massage psyops in secret locations under the table. Sure, Deshaun Watson is down, figuratively and literally. He is personally devastated. But he is still insanely wealthy and faced no major consequences to anything but his reputation for his behavior. I’m not going to celebrate his injury because I don’t wish ill even on people to whom I object.
But I won’t pretend he deserves to be free from condemnation just because he’s sad he can’t play football anymore. The corporate structure around him did everything in its power to allow him to continue to play the game he presumably loves. It’s his own body that betrayed him.
