We are now approaching the third stage in the infamous trial of Deshaun Watson v. Reality; so far, it’s been a brief but colorful tenure as a Cleveland Brown, the results of which are safe to say have been disastrous. There’s no sugarcoating it here: the trade has been a complete failure. A total faceplant. It has a fighting chance to go down as the worst trade in NFL history.
Okay, maybe we call the first season a dummy round. He was suspended for most of it and played six games at the tail end when the Browns were already out of it. 2023 was nothing short of a horror show circus, full of untraceable “injuries” that he and the team would bizarrely hide from the media week to week. It wasn’t until a 38-year-old journeyman got bored of eating pizza on the couch with his kids and decided to get back on the gridiron that the Browns offense found stability and carried them into the postseason. Joe Flacco didn’t need 25 games to “shake the rust off.” Hell, he didn’t even need TWO.
It should very well be the case that 2024 is the last and final straw for The 230 Million Dollar Man. Unfortunately, Watson himself doesn’t seem to understand the concept of accountability and earning his worth, based on his recent comments to the media. And frankly, he shouldn’t understand the concept, given he was handed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for going 1-2 in the playoffs. This doesn’t even consider the “pattern of sexual assault,” as described by Judge Sue L. Robinson, which Watson compelled the Houston Texans to enable for years with nondisclosure agreements and at least 66 different massage therapists, all women, over a 17-month period according to The New York Times. A real knight in shining massage oil, he is.
Browns fans were treated to the hopeful, encouraging and uplifting words of their starting quarterback in the opening moments of Training Camp at Greenbrier, West Virginia this year. Instead of getting out in front of restoring his likability to the fan base and the NFL at large, Watson got offended by basic questions regarding his health, lashing out at the great realm of people who happen not to love a deviant predator who’s made a quarter-billion despite phoning it in as their quarterback. Players around him were “aggravated” when he casually decided not to play on gameday despite telling everyone all week he would play, according to Jason Lloyd of The Athletic.
“I think, honestly, it’s really just blocking out all the bull—-,” Watson said last week. “It was tough coming in two years ago, different environment, different team, different all that. So you come in and your character’s been mentioned this way and then kind of flip on you and the biggest thing, you’re trying to get people to like you or improve. But now it’s like, at the end of the day, it’s two years in and if you don’t like me or you have your own opinions, then, yeah, it is what it is.”
Watson has fully embraced the victimhood, painting a picture of an innocent little boy who has been unjustly attacked from all angles for no conceivable reason.
“My character was getting challenged,” he continued. “I know who I am, and a lot of people never really knew my history. I knew who I really was, so they’re going based off other people’s opinions and whatever other people are saying. But yeah, I’m a person. I like to have people like me, and I feel like a lot of people are like that. So sometimes things are in your brain, you just gotta turn and just gotta forget it. It is what it is.”
Watson continued repeating the same lines over and over again, making one wonder if he is trying to convince himself of his model citizenship at this point.
What’s more important than the words Watson uses is his tone. Not once has anything The 230 Million Dollar Man said sounded genuine. It hasn’t even conveyed a degree of warmth or assurance of anything but his own butthurt ego. Ever since the first press conference between Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Berry, Watson has utterly failed to endear himself to the City of Cleveland and its fans, who can endure levels of torture many military generals thought impossible. But nothing has dampened the spirits of the Browns fan base quite like Watson.
His inner circle of shameless enablers is as much to blame. Self-described “quarterback coach” Quincy Avery has recently engaged in back-and-forth spats with Browns fans on Twitter/X, lashing out at the most inconsequential comments made in regards to Watson’s practice with the team.
@TheJJPotts on Twitter/X: “Guys, guys, guys,….. every QB shuts it down for the day early after a bad throw. Guy didn’t have a strong arm beforehand and now… it’s weaker. The curse of Baker Reagan Mayfield is real.”
Avery responded as only a man child with mental illness would respond to such a meaningless tweet:
@QuincyAvery on Twitter/X: “LoL you seem obsessed. 75% of your tweets are about him. You need to touch some grass my guy.”
Generally, Avery has done nothing except hype up workout videos of him throwing in shorts and t-shirts in warm weather against no defense. Again, the problem of yes men burying an already delusional man in a deeper state of delusion.
This general “I don’t understand why people could possibly not like me” attitude perpetrated by Watson and his lackeys is not helping his reputation throughout the league or in his own city he’s supposed to represent.
The deal should have been clear from the get-go: Watson needs to win a Super Bowl, or the trade is a bust. That is still the deal. For what it cost to acquire him, there is no question about it. But now, his biggest defenders have changed the goalposts in attempt to convince themselves that the trade hasn’t been a raging dumpster fire. They expect the critics to throw Watson bouquets for one-half of admirable football against the Ravens, among other minimal accomplishments. They tout a 5-1 record in which they pathetically give Watson credit for the Week 7 win against the Colts. And this is all before pulling out the injury excuse, which may not hold any water to begin with, as nobody has yet to trace Watson’s “injury” back to any specific play in any game from 2023.
NFL analysts are calling this upcoming season a “battle” for Watson to win. I disagree entirely. He’s already won the “battle.” He already got paid $230 million for going 4-12 in his last full season in the NFL four years ago and having a losing record in the playoffs. The damage is done. His checks have been cashed and nothing changes that. He could fake an injury for the entirety of 2024 and he would still get every penny. This is the insane death spiral Jimmy Haslam forced Browns fans to deal with. At least, some of them. I, like many others, know a solid handful of people who gave up on watching the Browns after they kicked Baker Mayfield to the curb for an alleged serial predator. Most of them at-or-above “staunch” level of fans, with their Fall Sunday routine and a schedule stuck to their fridge. Fans who watched every game, albeit frustratingly, during the wretched 1-31 reign of terror. Now they’ve actively turned their hopes against the team or flat out don’t care.
It’s sad, it’s embarrassing and many of us would just be glad to see Deshaun Watson take his unearned money and go away. For the long-term health of the organization and its fans, it may be necessary sooner rather than later. Browns fans have been slapped in the face by Jimmy Haslam and his crooked son-in-law for too long, they don’t need to be double-teamed by their own quarterback whose jersey they are supposed to wear with absolute pride.
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