DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns trade for DeShaun Watson

What is Ray Rice up to? Might as well sign them all make the 3 ring circus complete.

Thanks for all the stat work Jay

This was my thought too. I figured they’d want Ward or Newsome, JOK, or hunt, etc

The Browns Will Never Live Down Trading for Deshaun Watson

For so long Cleveland had been a lovable loser of a franchise, but everyone involved sold their souls to acquire a quarterback still facing sexual assault lawsuits.

Maybe this is how it goes after so many years of getting kicked around and picked on. If you’re a laughingstock loser for long enough, you start thinking like the teams that have long bullied you around. You lose your pluck and your grit and you turn a little bit colder because that’s what everyone else does, right? You convince yourself that winning is all that matters to everyone else, too, making all decisions in shameless pursuit of wins feel defensible.

Right?

You trash your own people, smear them on the way out and try to trade them with some anonymous middle finger about childish behavior. You trade for a quarterback who was accused by 22 women of sexual harrassment and assault and pretend that a criminal nonindictment from a grand jury is the same thing as an exoneration. You reward that same player who acted like the entire thing was just an inconvenience for him. How about we ask some of the people impacted by his behavior how it feels to carry pepper spray to work now or choose outfits meant to deter unwanted sexual contact? (Sports Illustrated’s independent reporting uncovered corroborating evidence for one plaintiff’s account, and another woman who isn’t suing shared the details of her massage therapy session with Deshaun Watson as a way of publicly supporting the plaintiffs.)

Not only did Watson get a financial windfall from Friday’s absolute farce of a signing, but the Browns, according to our Albert Breer, structured the contract in a way that would minimize his fines if the NFL suddenly grows a conscience and suspends him.

The Browns are never going to live down trading for Watson, to whom they immediately gave a five-year, fully guaranteed contract extension. They groveled at such volume, oozed such desperation, that Watson couldn’t ignore them, even after he’d removed them from his list of finalists. Congratulations to a club that now becomes the fifth-best team in its conference at best. It cost them only their souls.

What could Watson have said in those meetings that not only eased their concerns (L-O-L) about the nature of the lawsuits filed against him, but also forced Cleveland to perform cartwheels in the street just to get his pen on paper? What kind of miracle happened inside those four walls?

The truth is that the Browns didn’t care. The Saints didn’t care. The Falcons didn’t care. The Panthers didn’t care. None of those teams for a moment saw the irony in their auditioning for Watson instead of the other way around. A handful of Pro Bowls went a long way, apparently. A down market for quarterbacks turned them all into nicotine fiends without a pack in sight, looking for old cigarette butts to smoke on the sidewalk.

Once upon a time, Cleveland was a lost franchise but in a way we could all respect and admire. The team chugged in the mud, season after season, making comical pratfalls in the process but remaining endearingly The Browns. Maybe they had a lot of quarterbacks, enough that you could fill the full backside of an adult extra-large jersey, but they had fans who loved every one of them to pieces. Have you ever talked to someone from Cleveland about Kelly Holcomb? Did you ever for a second listen to the completely baseless momentary excitement for Jason Campbell? Brandon Weeden? Colt McCoy? Tyrod Taylor? Robert Griffin III? So many diehards believed in all of them, the way we might believe in new presidents or spiritual leaders. It was part of the entire milieu, knowing that it may not work out but willingly going along for the ride anyway, hoping it would all turn out fine.

What a gutting feeling it must be to finally get a supposed long-term answer who offers so little to believe in at all.

Did you watch the press conference interim coach Mike Priefer gave in January 2021 after Cleveland won its first playoff game in decades, during the moment when he thanked the fans? He nearly cried. He grew up a Browns fan. He understood what it meant against the backdrop of all the decades of losing. What it meant to have a team of homegrown boys come out and whip the Steelers.

Somewhere along the way, that became not good enough. Not fast enough. The entire operation turned into some callous shadow corporation plotting and scheming. They lost what it meant to become the Browns, and, over the course of the next few months, while they lift Watson up on some kind of dais despite 22 civil cases still pending, they’ll lose whatever ounce of genuine goodwill was remaining.

This isn’t a closeted defense of Baker Mayfield, who needed to get better on the field. This isn’t some kind of empty saber rattling for clicks. This is just an acknowledgement of a damn shame. Just a moment when the crushing reality of the NFL sets in; when you wonder how the whole operation could ever act in fans’ best interests when its primary concern is passing along booze and gambling ads, all while tolerating enough unsavory behavior to drown out the reason we all came together around it in the first place.

Maybe some of us, and, again, we’re talking to the Browns’ front office here, just reach a point where the losses drown out the last bit of common sense we have. Maybe we all sell out at one time or another. Maybe our bosses strong-arm us into this kind of behavior and we put up with it because we all have mouths to feed.

That sounds better than the truth about what happened Friday.

Right?

https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/03/19/cleveland-browns-never-live-down-deshaun-watson

Thanks for posting that article. I’m in the mental state of being so bittersweet on this deal. I fully understand the downside and the upside.

I don’t blame those who are totally disgusted, nor do I blame those who think wins trump all.

I’m somewhere in the middle trending towards “well, he IS a great QB”

Haslam just sold out the future of the franchise by giving away the most lucrative contract in NFL history and three first round draft picks for a mediocre QB and top tier sexual predator. Wonderful. I am out and no longer a Browns fan. This sucks.

You'll like this one published a day earlier.

The Deshaun Watson Chase and the ‘Due Diligence’ Myth

The competition for Watson, while he stands accused of sexual misconduct in lawsuits filed by 22 women, shows just how low NFL teams will go.

Don’t try to fool us with spin, and don’t insult us by talking about “due diligence.” Some NFL team is going to trade a bunch of assets for Deshaun Watson, a Pro Bowl quarterback who has been accused of sexual misconduct in lawsuits filed by 22 women, for one simple reason: It wants a Pro Bowl quarterback so desperately that it doesn’t care he was accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women. This is the way of pro sports. People who wouldn’t trust Watson alone in a room with a loved one are eager to have him on the field.

Watson can help people win a Super Bowl, or at least win enough games to stay employed. Through his lawyer, he has denied any wrongdoing and asserted that the 22 women who accused him of sexual misconduct are lying. And a grand jury declined to indict him on criminal charges (more on that later). But there is one overriding fact you should always remember about a man who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women, which is that he has been accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women. The conversation about Deshaun Watson’s “character” should start there and never stray very far.

So, to the Atlanta Falcons: If you trade for Watson, don’t sell us any garbage about how you got to know him when he was your ball boy. You know, as though a ball boy could never go on to commit sexual misconduct. To the Carolina Panthers and New Orleans Saints: Not a word about “due diligence,” O.K.? You need a quarterback and Watson is a great one. If you cared about his character, you would Google him, and then you’d have to grapple with those accusations of sexual misconduct by 22 women.

Cleveland Browns, you have already disgraced yourselves by meeting with Watson and then leaking that you want to move on from Baker Mayfield because you want an “adult in the room,” as though a man who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women can provide some sort of cultural boost. You want a better quarterback, and Watson is better than Mayfield. That’s it.

And to everybody: Do not, under any circumstances, claim that a Houston grand jury exonerated Watson last week. It did nothing of the kind. It simply chose not to indict him. If you cite the grand jury’s decision not to press charges as proof he did nothing wrong, you only reveal your own ignorance about the criminal-justice system generally and sexual-assault cases specifically.

But you don’t have to be ignorant, because Melissa Morabito did some due diligence for you. Wasn’t that nice of her? Morabito is an associate professor in the University of Massachusetts-Lowell School of Criminology and Justice Studies and co-author of a U.S. Department of Justice-funded study of decision-making and attrition in sexual-assault cases.

The study covers 3,269 cases over a three-year period across six states. Only 1.6% of cases where sexual assault was reported to police ever made it to court. Morabito says the chances of Watson facing a jury trial were probably lower, because most of the accusations by the 22 women involve forcible fondling as opposed to direct penetration or rape, though at least one woman accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex. As Ann Burdges, a former police detective who is now president of End Violence Against Women International, says, these kinds of acts can be, “scripted by an offender in a setting of which there is isolation, control, and two people.”

The lack of direct eyewitnesses and physical evidence made this an extremely hard case to win. Add misperceptions about the massage-therapy profession and it becomes even harder. It’s true that the threshold for a grand-jury indictment is lower than for a jury conviction, and prosecutors have wide discretion in how they present their cases to grand juries. But let’s be real about how that game is often played, even when somebody is accused of sexual misconduct by at 22 women.

Some prosecutors worry about using resources on what they believe is a losing proposition, and they know they are often judged on their winning percentage in jury trials. This is one reason they can be reluctant to aggressively pursue sexual assault cases. As Morabito points out, with a high-profile case, simply dropping the case would be a bad look … but if the D.A. took it to a grand jury—where proceedings are private—and then intentionally presented a weak case, then what would happen? The grand jury would decide not to indict. The prosecutor wouldn’t risk losing a high-profile jury trial, but could still claim to have taken the case seriously.

“They can tell whatever story they want to tell,” Morabito says. “So it is a way to dispose of a case to show that, ‘I've done something, but it's not my fault. It's the fault of the grand jury.’” This might sound like a wild conspiracy theory, but it shouldn’t. “That’s not only reasonable,” Burdges says, “I’m sure that is a reality in many, many, many, many cases that are driven by more complex agendas than just presenting the facts to the grand jury.”

SI reached out to the Harris County district attorney’s office to ask about the nine criminal cases brought to the grand jury. In response to a question about a New York Times report that, “several of the women who filed criminal complaints also sat in a room together at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, ready to provide testimony, but only one was called in front of the grand jury,” Dane Schiller, the district attorney office’s director of communications, wrote in an email, “Grand jury proceedings are secret under Texas law. That means that we are strictly prohibited from discussing them and that includes revealing anything about evidence. I can tell you that the presentation lasted more than six hours.”

To another question, about, specifically, what information was presented to the grand jury, Schiller wrote, “I am prohibited from revealing or discussing what evidence was presented. This is not an instance of not wanting to assist but we simply can’t go there.”

Because of the legal requirement for secrecy, we have no way of knowing how hard prosecutors fought for these charges. But we should not simply assume that the grand jurors heard the best possible case and decided not to indict based on the evidence. And even if they did decide that the alleged conduct was not an indictable offense, that still does not mean that Deshaun Watson lived up to the ethical standards we expect from pro athletes, or, really, human beings.

NFL teams can thank the New York Times for their due diligence if they would like. Or they can read Sports Illustrated’s independent reporting that uncovered corroborating evidence of one plaintiff’s claim, and also telling the story of a licensed massage therapist—not among the plaintiffs—who had a similarly problematic session with Watson. But please, please, please don’t come at us with any nonsense about how all 22 women accused him of sexual misconduct because he is rich and famous. Watson’s fame means that anybody accusing him goes through hell. His money means he can find lawyers to win in court.

“He may think he has a target on his back,” Burdges says. “But really, he's got a hall pass in his pocket.”

Burdges read through news stories about Watson being accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women, and she couldn’t even believe we were having this conversation: “Do you really think another team will want him, as toxic and tainted as he is with this? And having been dropped by so many sponsors?”

The answer to that was: Of course they want him even though he has been accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women. Great quarterbacks are the NFL’s hidden treasure. Everybody wants one and nobody knows exactly where to look. Teams see Watson as a rare gem: a young and proven superstar who is sitting out in the open, waiting to be acquired. But if that’s all they see, they aren’t really looking.

There are still civil cases pending against Watson. For the plaintiffs, those are easier to win than criminal cases, but Watson could also settle them and claim he only did so because he wants to “move on” and “restore my name” after being accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will probably suspend Watson, but a suspension would likely cost Watson games, not years, because Watson was never indicted after being accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women.

If the general manager who acquires him is honest—which he won’t be—he will say that he doesn’t care if Watson is a good person as long as he is a rational one. Watson can earn hundreds of millions more dollars playing the game he loves if he just behaves for the rest of his career. A person of sound mind should be able to do that; a person with a pathological need to overpower and humiliate women could not. Publicly, some team will be counting on Deshaun Watson to play awesome football. And privately, they’ll hope he does not get accused of sexual misconduct by more women.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/03/18/deshaun-watson-trade-due-diligence-myth

Wonder how the female Haslams reacted? You excited about the new commercials coming our way? Do we still have a female coach? I have lots of questions. Maybe I just need to let this simmer for a day or so. Last thing I thought I would do when I got up this morning was to be so pissed at the Browns. smh

JMHO, we all are quick to JUDGE. Their is only one real judge. I thought our society thought you were INNOCENT until proven guilty. I'm positive there has never been a money hungry lawyer, there have never been females who saw a rich guy in a not so good looking spot and wanted a big payday. Masseuse parlors are businesses and males/females go to them. I'm not happy our new QB put himself in these PAST situations. Pick up the first stone and throw if you've never made a mistake or two or several. He ain't a killer, thief....WE don't know if/what he's done.....and the JUSTICE system didn't even send him to trial. Wonder how many will consider forgiveness.....none of us need it.......GO Browns!!!

How many more posts like this are you going to have? I think people on this board know how you feel aboit the situation. Maybe it's time you root for another Team or just chill for awhile?

My question about Mark was just that . I never really thought about him as a Preacher , just another poster. So don't get in my face.

To Pastermark if you were upset by my question , my apologies .

Or maybe you shouldn't worry your little self about me.

Screaming out loud is more cathartic than typing. Just saying.

I kinda see it this way too.

You can hate the trade, and hate the person, but Watson is far from mediocre.

I don't like the trade. I understand it to an extent, but it's just bad all around for me. I will root for the Browns because I love the city and the team, but its definitely a weird situation right now,

Wasn't 'in your face', was answering you and trying to be nice to him at the same time. I thought you were shocked by his liking the trade too, at the moment, and that my post ("shocked") might have caused you to think ill of him. That's all I was doing man. If I was being intentionally rude, it would have been much more direct.

I'll vouch for that.

Trying to sort this out in my head. Thought I would compare it to the Roethlisberger situation and see if that gives me any clarity. Typing as I think about the similarities and differences so leaving this as an observational post and not offering any opinions or conclusions at this time.

When Ben's incident happened he was already a steeler, don't like what he allegedly did but I am a believer in supporting your own.
The browns actively sought out watson which leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

What watson allegedly did was despicable. What ben allegedly did was infinitely worse.
I think the article OCD posted states it quite well. What watson did doesn't live up to the ethical standards we should reasonably expect from a human being.

Ben had 2 separate and distinct incidences of this magnitude, watson had 22 of his

After the ben incident, he seems to have straightened out his life. He was a total douchebag. Then he got married, started a family and settled down. Seemed to stay on the straight and narrow afterwards. "Seemed". Watson to be determined but to date he seems to show no remorse for any of his actions. HE seems alsmost smug about it. An attitude of Yea I did it, so? I am deshaun watson, I can do that if I want. Just my impression of his attitude.


Anybody have any similarities/differences that they see?

A few thoughts,
Because of pure odds, there likely is a bigger scumbag somewhere in the organization, but just hasn't been charged and never will be.
Our 1st rounders won't matter much after we win OUR FIRST OF THREE SUPER BOWLS NEXT YEAR.

Looking forward to my 2 Watson jerseys.

It amazes me that so many people convict people in their minds without having all the information needed to make a proper decision. The Grand Jury in Houston did not have enough evidence to take Deshaun Watson to trial. Let that sink in again for a minute. There was not enough evidence to take to trial. That is actually a fairly low bar. To be found innocence in a trial a defendant only needs to show reasonable doubt. There is less evidence available where there is much more than a reasonable doubt. As a society we need to to give people their due process. Not to convict in the court of public opinion.

There are a few posters that would…

There might not be sound evidence enough to indite someone, but we all know that 22 accusations, that are all basically same, means that there is 90% chance that he is a serial predator and a therefore a sociopath that has no regret for the things he has done or sympathy for his victims. That's all fine. The justice system is not perfect and all knowing
But I don't want to cheer for him because I don't want to be disgusted at myself, because I still would know that there is a 90% chance that this guy is a serial predator.
I think cheering for someone like this as the face of your franchise is a good way to even lose the respect of the people around you.
It's not worth it.

j/c

Off season is the most dangerous time of year for me to be a Cleveland Browns fan. At some point, the soap opera is gonna land. And I'm always gonna hate it.

This time, the offseason has given me a 14k gold-plated turd to be 'happy' about.
Gee- thanks.

I see playoffs and potential Super Bowl appearances in our near future.
Cool. I guess.

Here's what I'm saying:
I know myself. And because of that, I know how I will look at every single Browns win for the duration of this young man's tenure: with an asterisk.

There will be for me, a small stain in the corner of every upcoming Browns snapshot that features Mr. Watson. A 'watermark' if you will.
If I had been a PIT fan from childhood, and was raised to be the same person I am now, I'd have spent the last 12+ years placing that watermark on all the Steelers' snapshots, as well. It's just how I am. I know myself.

It just bugs me to know that if/when CLE wins a trophy with this guy, I won't be able to celebrate with the same abandon than I could if all our new Super Bowl snapshots didn't have that gat-dam watermark down in the bottom righthand corner. This move will increase my chance to see a CLE championship, but it will also taint- in some small measure- my level of pleasure, if/when it happens.

A part of me already wants to take a blisteringly hot shower with lye soap and a barbed-wire loofa, and Dude hasn't taken a single snap for My Team. If/when we win a championship with this guy, I will be happy for us, but I will never be ecstatic, like I feel I deserve to be. This dude's personal cologne reeks of smoke from a hidden fire... and I might not ever allow myself to get over this. I'm NOT afraid to admit that- to any and all of us.

Go Browns.
You never cease to make my fandom hard work.

i just want to clarify to the board, not saying you said this, but Watson did not rape anybody. he's a creep because this is basically prostitution? paying women for "massages." i think the difference is that all of the women came in contact with him voluntarily, and the lack of evidence that suggest he forced himself on to someone, leading to no criminal charges, has to be a factor. right now we have consenting adults knowing what the deal is, taking a flight that watson paid for to his home, or meeting up with him on the road.

however, i dont think one being already on the team vs courting a Qb from another should make a difference. i believe the steelers at one point actually tried to get rid of Ben? it happened a while ago so im not sure.

on that point of it happened a while ago: Watson has maintained his innocence. OCD brought up what Acho said, which is very true that we ALL have to remember here:

just because you're not facing criminal charges doesn't mean you're innocent, AND just because people accuse you of something doesn't mean you're guilty. you can't pick one and not consider the other. if Watson is maintaining his innocence and actively fighting the civil suits and answering questions, then what exactly is he supposed to be remorseful for? contacting women who clearly offering a lot more than a late night massage?

one thing i try to do is put myself in someone's shoes with the info we have. so if i'm Watson, if you want me to feel remorseful for contacting unlicensed "massage" therapist, then i guess.

but i'm not gonna feel remorseful for something i didn't do, which is sexually harassment and/or assault.

thats why this issue is so complicated that i just focus on the football aspect of it. i can only imagine me jumping on my high horse and trashing this dude, but then if i'm accused of something, hoping that people give me the benefit of the doubt until all the facts come out.

its so easy to judge someone in a situation, yet so hard to expect people not to judge you if you find yourself in a dicey situation.

i deployed 4 times and have 100% va rating from PTSD, yet people on this very board have accused me of lying about my service and faking the PTSD to get the 100%. just by people even posting that places the thought in the back of people's mind that "hmm, maybe swish is lying, or tried to pull a fast one with the VA."

remember all the cop protest and racism and "hey, lets wait til all the facts come out" rhetoric? well guess what i'm gonna do? wait til all the facts come out.

Niether you or I know the truth. The Houston Grand Jury heard all the evidence and determined there is not enough evidence to say a crime occurred. I am not better than the law. In this Country you are presumed innocent UNTIL proven guilty. There was a reason our founding fathers decided on that right as a citizen. Main reason is to prevent mob rules. Everyone deserves their due process. Public opinion is not the court of law.

Some men on here trying really hard to make themselves feel better about rooting for a serial sex predator.

No Swish - it was NOT consensual prostitution. It was not women entering into a voluntary agreement. That is not what has been suggested at all. Go find and listen to the podcast that Milkman posted - it is good, informative, non-judgmental but full of information.

Couching these incidents as adults consenting to prostitution is very, very wide of the mark.

Agreed. A super bowl win with Watson will be tainted by who he is. I'm reminded of the quote from Enders Game. "The way we win matters."

I think it was based on what’s reported. I listened to the podcast that was posted.

While I respect the discussion, we have to remember that if what they said was true, than the grand jury would’ve indicted them. But that’s the thing, they do NOT have the information that the grand jury had access to, nor did they listen to the deposition of the women like the grand jury did.

None of us have.

I would be willing to bet the lawyers of the NFL, Cleveland Browns, and the other teams have. Then they made the decision to pursue Watson.

That right there is a good point. The teams and league tend to really have the inside scoop on that.

And after the grand jury decided not to indict, no less than 6 teams attempted to trade for Watson: Seahawks, colts, browns, panthers, falcons, and saints.

And those are just the teams we know about. We don’t know the # of other teams who inquired about Watson but didn’t pursue simply because the price was too high. But that’s more than a division worth of teams on record who tried to pursue him after the findings of the case.

I think the hardest thing to wrap my head around for me is that for Ben the allegations seemed in keeping with his character/image. For Watson, they seemed out of character. Ben was a wild party boy. Watson graduated college in 3 years and didn't go out much at all. Ben was busy riding his motorcycle around without a helmet. Watson was always seen being active/positive in the community. For Ben, there was video of him dancing and drinking in the bar before the incident. For Watson, there's no video to "make it real."

I don't really get a sense of smugness from Watson. I get the sense that he feels like he didn't do anything wrong. I'm not saying the he didn't do anything wrong, but he may have a different idea of what "normal" is than you or me. He grew up in government housing playing sports with drug dealers and gang members with no father figure. link

Watson may just be a really good actor, but up until the allegations I believed the good guy image. Now it's hard to know what to think.

I am out for a while. It will take me some time to figure it out. Not happy.

Hallam is a petulant owner, and this team will be hurt for a while.

And I would have taken Watson in the first place. I liked him coming out, but not now.

Nobody threatened you. So why you would call me a internet tough guy I have no clue. You sound like your very insecure.

Now, you said it yourself, he will be paying off many of these civil suits. Well here is the thing, if you have to pay them off, then apparently you did something very wrong.

I am sure. No doubt we got a steal here. We don't disrupt what we currently have in place and pick up a top QB in his prime.

That isn't always the case. Many times it is cheaper to do that, not to mention the issue becomes the past rather than something in front of you. That brings peace of mind.

People with some fame and money do face issues us normal people don't face. I am not saying he did or didn't do anything. The only thing I do know is the Grand Jury couldn't find any evidence that he did anything to issue a true bill.

Remember, in our justice system, it doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what you can prove.

Watson just earned $230m + all the money he previously earned in Houston. This will never be a fair trail. I almost sure he will buy himself out of trouble.

Some supporters has already made up their mind or even better they just close the door and forget it never happened. Exactly the dream scenario that the owners and the Browns FO is hoping will happened. Do you really think the owners and our GM will lose one second of sleep and have any real sympathy with these women?

They will say the right things but I’m not that naive. Bunch of hypocrites and their actions is the proof.

NOPE! I am out for good on Cleveland. I might stick around so I can laugh at the stragglers like the rest of the country when it comes to this franchise. Peace.

Life is choices.