Can Deshaun Watson stay out of trouble?
Not just with sexual assaults, but essentially any kind of off-field incident that after facing 22 civil lawsuits for an array of sexual misconduct allegations, yet almost assuredly returning to the NFL in 2022, could all but end his career?
That’s it. That’s Cleveland’s five-draft-pick, $230 million, potential owner-humiliating and front office career-ending bet.
Is this abhorrent, albeit not criminal, behavior limited to a certain situation and/or interaction — Watson’s hiring of private massage therapists?
Or is that lack of even basic respect for women, that desire for power and violence, that egotistical thinking, that absence of concern for anything other than himself … destined to be repeated or manifested in other actions?
Cleveland is betting the allegations are what Watson did, not who Watson is.
“We are confident in Deshaun,” Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said in a statement Sunday.
That’s a nice sentiment, but they don’t know.
Cleveland’s faith can be bolstered by the fact New Orleans, Atlanta and Carolina were also willing to make that high-stakes, high-profile bet as well, but it’s still faith. Maybe that speaks to the confidence in Watson. Or maybe it’s just the desperation of NFL teams in a league increasingly dominated by elite quarterbacks.
Start with this: No matter what gets said in various statements, Cleveland doesn’t care about the allegations against Watson. Once he was cleared by a Texas grand jury of criminal charges, the Browns joined the feeding frenzy to sign him, including offering an astoundingly pro-Watson contract.
The Haslams can pretend that they care, but if they really did, they wouldn’t have gone after Watson in the first place. This isn’t the retaining of a player already on the roster. They pursued him, offering everything he possibly could have dreamed.
For the Browns, the allegations against Watson weren’t a bad thing. They were a blessing, a golden opportunity to capitalize on whatever Watson did with those massage therapists to land the star quarterback they’ve been seeking for decades.
This is a business acquisition, an exploitation of a situation, a depreciated asset to be scooped up. This is about wins and money and absolutely nothing else. There is no hiding it when it comes to Dee and Jimmy Haslam’s “thoughts and prayers” routine.
Watson will be free to play soon enough. A Texas grand jury declined to indict him of any crimes. He can settle the civil suits with some of that pending $230 million. He’ll get suspended by the league for four or six or eight games.
He’ll be back under center eventually, though. And for Cleveland, which watched Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethliesberger repeatedly beat them on the field after getting past his own sexual assault case and suspension, that was enough.
Some fans will be outraged, but if you were expecting even a modicum of ethics from the National Football League or the Haslams, you were looking in the wrong place.
“We have done extensive investigative, legal and reference work over the past several months to provide us with the appropriate information needed to make an informed decision about pursuing [Watson] as our quarterback,” general manager Andrew Berry said in a statement Sunday as the team announced the acquisition of Watson.
It stands to reason that team lawyers analyzed pending cases, private investigators looked into essentially every other aspect of his life, psychologists tried to analyze him from afar and eventually the Haslams, Berry and coach Kevin Stefanski actually sat down with Watson for a couple hours at his lawyers office to talk.
The team described the conversation as a chance to “have a straightforward dialogue, discuss our priorities, and hear directly from him on how he wants to approach his career on and off the field.”
How aggressive the discussion got is questionable. Cleveland was recruiting Watson as much as it was interrogating him. No one involved is some genius clinical psychiatrist. The Athletic reported a good portion of the meeting involved Stefanski and Watson watching cuts of the Browns offense on an iPad.
There is no magic bullet that fully clears Watson. If there were, he’d have employed it long ago and proven this was some big misunderstanding. Something terrible happened here, even if it didn’t rise to a criminal standard.
That said, through it all nothing has emerged from any other part of Watson’s life, past or present. No other allegations have come forward. No other lawsuits. No other women, or anyone else, telling stories.
Outside of these incidents, Watson still comes across as the guy who was held up as a model person and professional dating back to his high school days outside of Atlanta, through his championship run at Clemson, and across his first four years with the Texans.
Cleveland can point to all of that and believe this is somehow isolated — if 22 incidents can be isolated. If it is, then Watson might be able to avoid the situations that caused him to abuse. Perhaps, and everyone should root for this, he’s worked on becoming a better person.
But no one knows. No investigation, no statement, no purported Dee and Jimmy Haslam vote of confidence can assure that.
Cleveland bet big that they could use an awful situation to get the player they needed for their business. That’s it. Straight up, bottom line.
It’s up to Watson to make it pay off.