DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum The Browns starting QB...

I won't try to pander to you about how your posts are articulate and well thought out - imma leave that to someone else - but this seems out of character, I am sure it's not your intention to come across like you are dismissing all these claims because some of the therapists aren't licensed and some use social media to promote their business? I dare say there are a lot of individuals that offer "those" services. Some of them might be riding these allegations. But certainly there are some licensed professional therapists in the group of 24, and I bet many others that use social media and have never offered a happy ending in their lives.

Once again, I don't think the Browns did anything to Baker that isn't done all the time in the NFL. But, Baker cries about it and The Fabulous Baker Boys back him up and trash other Brown's fans that point that fact out. I just wish he could have been mature enough to keep his big mouth shut because he probably would be gone by now and we wouldn't have to listen to the same BS by the same people who have made every excuse in the world for him and bashed almost everyone else in the organization.

What a Disaster! Browns keep Browning.

If Watson gets this team to a SB, then than Baker Fan Club
Will make Baker a very distant memory and stop crying out
Unfairly he was treated by the front office
The Baker Fan Club act like he got this franchise to a AFC Championship
Game or SB.
The Browns won 1 playoff game with Mayfield
A hundred QBS have won a single playoff game
TJ Yates , Rex Grossman, Neil O'Donnell, Stan Humphries
Baker is a dime a dozen QB. Plays hard, tries hard, but has
Physical limitations and can't process defenses when
The game is on the line

Totally normal behavior.

That damn local media stirring up junk again.

Right? I mean that's only four different complaints per month, what's the big deal?

I'm paraphrasing here - not a direct quote - but someone was suggesting that being promiscuous is normal - and that pro-athletes are encouraged to pay for sex because it's less likely to lead to being sued. So someone might think this is very normal.

Except in Texas it is illegal to pay for sex and obviously 24 women and counting didn't agree with Watson being promiscuous. Add in the payment to the spa manager that was arranging the meetings then taking the 5th in her deposition spells serious problems for Watson. Now it would appear that 66 women are involved one way or another and that's 23 more than the public currently knows about. This is getting very ugly fast!

Hey, Y'all can quit blaming the media, the people that want DW here, the Browns, the women, and even DW himself for this mess! It's all my fault for thinking Baker got treated like crap and the Browns borwned on this. SO blame OCD, I have big shoulders and can carry it. Promise I won't call you out and call you DW boys for it too.




/purple

Looking more and more like that $5K payment to the massage parlor owner was a pimp fee to me.

This tweet is from an investigation that the NY Times has been doing on Watson.

Reaching dumpster fire status.

Was that really necessary? I already have 8 to 10 guys giving me crap. Did you really need to pile on? I was wrong to say that. I apologize.

Anyway...........the Browns are screwed again. I had given up on them winning once I saw all the great qbs in the AFC last year and especially in the playoffs. Then, I hear we got Watson and I think that we have a chance to compete. Now, it looks like we're screwed yet again.

Magic Johnson is on the message board!

Super necessary.

It turns out that trading three first round picks for a guy that has sexual assault allegations against him, in perpetuity, might not have been the wisest decision.

As much fun as the Watson saga is we should probably turn our attention to…. Who the starting QB is going to be. Watson is toast, doneski, fineto, buhhh bye. This is coming to a very unhappy ending for browns fans (save your boos).

So… Baker? I super doubt it. Lots of debate about him manning up and the Browns wising up (or do I have that backwards?) but I still doubt it greatly. I just don’t think any team & player recovers from that. Not without a sick new contract in the offing. Baker isn’t the type to go back. And the Browns don’t seem inclined to do an overture.

I think it’s Brissett. He’s not horrible. Not very good either. Game plan changes significantly. How so? Good question, I leave that to you.

I don't think it's legal. And I don't think it's normal. But that's just me and my opinion - assuming he paid for sex and it looks like it. Morally I don't care - though 66 different women in 17 months is beyond sanity.... Someone else who has been acting like the DW cheermiester was trying to normalize all this and claim the NFL was unjustly going to suspend DW.

If he had paid for sex with 66 women and that was the entire story I'd have been a lot less concerned. My position always has been this could get a lot worse, I am a bit concerned that is still true. But at least Watson didn't ask for a trade...

I agree that the worst case scenario for any of these 66 women is that he coerced / forced himself on them or exposed himself - uninvited & unwanted. It doesn't rise to the level of rape - and as I have said before I don't know what the actual crime is if you jack yourself off in front of your massage therapist. But it would be a truly horrible and traumatizing event for some of these women if it happened - maybe not for all of them idk .... but we have no proof of those activities. Those are allegations. My comments are really just regarding the facts that we know.

Makes me sick to my stomach if the Browns really lose out on getting the player they thought they were signing and have given away 3 first round picks for nothing. If Watson misses an entire year - I'd think it was a bad trade. But if it's longer or worse, I don't care about Haslam and his $253M .... I care about how it hurts the team building and restocking ability over the 3 years we lost 1st round picks.

[/quote]

If he had paid for sex with 66 women and that was the entire story I'd have been a lot less concerned. My position always has been this could get a lot worse, I am a bit concerned that is still true. But at least Watson didn't ask for a trade...[/quote]

Uh, the Houston Texans say, “Hold my beer.”

Unfortunately, morally wrong is the least of Watson's issues. More than 1 incident of soliciting is a 3rd degree felony in Texas and comes with a 2-10 year sentence. So if Watson solicited sex at the spa numerous times that may constitute 1 offense. His lining up sessions on Instagram would constitute the 2nd or more. The DA hasn't went down that road yet but with the constant drip, drip,, drip of the women saying and there being text messages to back them up - it's looking like multiple cases of solicitation that the DA may eventually charge Watson with. Having individual civil cases would denote individual solicitation findings. It hasn't helped Watson's cause with his lawyer out there making statements like "Happy Endings" are expected. Watson losing civil suits may cost him a bundle but all it will take is an overzealous DA trying to make an example out of Watson to see him disappear for a few years doing time. That should be Watson's big worry now.

After all the recent news, the NFL is going to hammer Watson. That means we are screwed. We aren't winning w/out him. Berry might very well be fired. Stefanski might be gone the year after that. I'm 65 and time is running out. My family and I moved to Ohio from NY on the day the Browns won the 1964 Championship. My dad was a Giants fan, but had the game on the radio as we made the trip. Thus, I didn't get to to experience the joy of even winning one chip. I was 7 and not yet a Browns fan. The most heart-breaking defeat for me personally was in the AFC Championship game that was dubbed The Drive. That was the best Browns time I ever remembered watching. We were not quite as good the next year and then Art ran Marty out of town and things started going downhill.

It looks like the wheels are going to fall off yet again. Sure, there were multiple teams that would have made the same trade as the Browns did, but I have a feeling from reading this board that folks won't recognize that and they are going to want heads to roll. Looks like our window is shut.

Vers, I'm 67 1/2 and have had the same wish for years that you have had. I feel the same pain you have and this Watson thing was mismanaged. Uh, so was the Mayfield situation. In any case, we all know there were other bidders for Watson. I think the point that is missed is the Browns were eliminated in the early going. I have a hard time believing the Browns were originally out bid - I don't think Watson wanted to come to Cleveland. Just my opinion, but I think the original offers along with Miami's earlier all had stipulations in them that the civil and criminal stuff was cleared up. Berry, Stefanski, and Haslam then hopped on a plane to Houston to sweeten the deal and by all indication took the stipulation off the table with the richest contract in football. Then Berry structured the contract in a way that Watson wouldn't lose any significant money if suspended which really looks suspect at this time.

It looks like to me that Watson 1) dupped the Browns into thinking he was innocent or would only sign with no stipulations and 2) the Browns willingly joined the party by trying to protect Watson's money if suspended by the structure of his contract.

IMHO, the fans will have nothing to do with the fallout. Haslam is the one who will inflict the collateral damage if this thing goes way south. Berry and Stefanski will take the hit for this the uglier it gets. Bank on it!

I don't think they were originally outbid either. I heard Shefty say that all four teams agreed to Houston's trade demands. So yeah, we probably sweetened the deal. I would have been okay w/that if the suspension was 4-6 games, but this is looking really bad. I just want to see us win before I leave this earth. It's hard being a Browns fan. It really is.

I watched my Grandfather, and Dad go their whole life's waiting for the Chicago Cubs to win another World Series and never seeing it. I was fortunate to see that happen for them at the expense of my local team at the time the Indians. I wasn't a Browns fan in the 60's or early 70's because the Bears were my team. Yes, I'm a converted fan but a fan just the same. I'd like to think I have 20 more years to wait but the last 20 have been brutal.

This is depressing, but it looks like I might get some wear out of my sweet Baker t-shirt after all. If this goes as I think it might, can Haslam fire himself?

I thought the Browns had set the bar low already in terms of utter clueless. But, nooooooooope.

Put the Browns in a conservatorship, a la Brittany Spears. The Haslams appear completely incompetent. I'm half joking.

Every few years I have a convo with myself about the futility of following this stupid team from the city I grew up in but don’t even visit anymore. I always come back like a battered spouse.

This time feels very different. It’s bigger than just garden variety poor football decisions. It’s poor value systems, terrible big picture thinking, it’s treating the fans, your family, like crap in a very dismissive, low value way. Like they’ll accept that you sling meth as long as the money is flowing. Yea, a lot of fans will continue to root, but a lot won’t.

I love watching football but I feel like if this goes the way it’s looking, the Browns are going to be in the toilet for years to come. Maybe they should be. Finger pointing, firings and players not re signing and scattering like birds and blah blah blah. Same old story in the face of so much promise squandered.

I can’t really put my heart into another team. I was actually happy for Cinci this year and was rooting for them in the SB but I couldn’t be persuaded to care about them long term. And I lived in Cinci for a few years! My inlaws are all Giants fans but… I just can’t care. I don’t want a sleeper cabin on the pity train but this debacle is maybe just too much. Too much ill will, bad faith, horrible decision on top of horrible decision, humiliation, destructive people, drama dram drama… everything I hate.

And to think, they could have just gone into next year with Baker, who I don’t believe is any messiah but is good enough when healthy to marshal an otherwise good team deep into the playoffs. All this crap would be some other team’s:city’s problem and we’d be arguing about Baker’s ability to see the field, talking playoffs, and receivers and camp and all the stuff we should be talking about.

What makes me the maddest is that this was all predictable. The second I heard about that contract and nothing immediately after it about settlements I thought “oh no… brace yourselves Cleveland”. I’m no genius. But you don’t give an embarrassingly historic reward to a guy with 22 people suing him (and many dozens more in the wings) for salacious reasons and expect the intensity to go DOWN. While we’re at it, let’s give the lion tamer a suit made out of bloody meat before he walks in the cage!

And yet… I’ve been fantasizing today that maybe the browns can find some point where the Texans withheld info and maybe if Watson gets exempted the league might also go ahead and void the whole trade and we’re back to just dealing with a Baker fiasco. Total fantasy land. But part of me thinks… you know what, no. If this goes the way it’s looking, this FO and ownership, who ever pursued this poison fruit should have to eat it. And that’s what’s different this time. I’m angry enough with my own team to kinda want to see them kicked. Hard. For stupidity but also for going so far off the rails of basic guiding principles.

/rant

I'm right with you.

If this all goes the way it seems it might, the Browns are screwed for years.

Lifelong Browns fan, and I can't and won't root for any other team. Like, when the Browns were gone for 3 years? I didn't watch football, other than maybe a playoff game, and the super bowl.

yet, some put EVERYTHING in DW's hand. Saviour.......... screw Baker............and here we are. Baker's gone, and who would blame him?

So we sit with Jacoby Brisset..............looks like I'll have plenty of Sunday afternoons to do whatever I want.

I don't know how it will all turn out, but I promise, it won't be what one poster promised. Screwed glued and tattooed. Chubb, Hunt, Myles, Clowney, Jeremiah Many letters, Ward.............they must - what do I know, I'm just a fan.

Being a Browns fan I'd propose it wasn't just predictable, but inevitable. We gambled big and probably have lost even bigger. I think the most likely best case scenario is the contract is voided and we dont pay the money and don't get the player, just lose the draft picks. I doubt Watson ever sees a regular season game for us.

j/c...

You know I almost felt bad for the “lifelong” browns fans crying here, you know the ones that hate new browns fans. But then I realized they are just sad their scheme to sell their soul for a football championship blew up in their faces. No concern regarding the pain, anguish, and hurt perpetrated on so many young women.

Justice will be served here and it won’t have anything to do with football championships, thank God.

The Browns owner, FO, and coach can now wallow in the fallout from making the worlds dumbest and most amoral trade in sports history.

I said this WEEKS ago. Amazing how you peeps ever thought Watson was ever going to play a down and even more amazingly Andrew Berry as well.

https://sports.yahoo.com/deshaun-wa...of-his-massage-encounters-004831228.html

Just more heat from a sports writer - the house is on fire!

Watson breaks his silence and it isn't very pretty or professional. But hey, the Browns have an adult for a QB now!

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/06/07/deshaun-watson-breaks-silence-via-social-media/

I agree. I wouldn't want to bring OBJ back, but the door to bringing Baker back has been sealed shut. Neither side wants that.

As new information becomes known, we begin to realize that dreams of Watson leading the Browns back to the playoffs is beginning to fade away. Many have relied on the fact that Texas Grand Juries did not choose to prosecute Watson. Well, below we get a look into how that Grand Jury process was handled by those Texas prosecutors.

The ultimate question becomes...just how much homework did the Browns do..?


Tony Buzbee feels “duped” by news of regular contact between prosecutors and Deshaun Watson’s lawyer

Posted by Mike Florio on June 7, 2022, 10:23 PM EDT
link


Tuesday’s article from Jenny Vrentas of the New York Times takes an unprecedented look at the extent to which Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson‘s lawyer, Rusty Hardin, communicated with Harris County, Texas prosecutors regarding the investigation and eventual grand jury proceedings arising from the criminal complaints filed against Watson. Based on information obtained from public records requests, Vrentas writes that Hardin commenced a “regular dialogue” with assistant district attorney Johna Stallings in early 2022.

According to Vrentas, Stallings and Hardin “met at Hardin’s office, spoke over the phone 12 times and exchanged more than two dozen text messages” in the two months before ten criminal complaints were presented to a pair of grand juries in Texas.
Hardin called it “a standard practice” for criminal defense lawyers to work directly with prosecutors. The Harris County district attorney’s office did not respond to specific questions from Vrentas about the communications.

Hardin, per Vrentas, “created a slide presentation arguing for Watson’s innocence and gave it to Stallings along with other documents he deemed important.” Watson did not testify before the grand jury.

“We will let our submissions to you on our client’s behalf serve as our presentation to the Grand Jury,” Hardin told Stallings via email.

Attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents the 24 women who have sued Watson in civil court — eight of whom made criminal complaints — posted a statement on Tuesday night criticizing the extent to which Hardin and the prosecutor communicated.

“Just so there is no confusion,” Buzbee said on Instagram, “I personally contacted the Harris County DA’s office one time on behalf of the victims to make available to her my clients and any evidence I had collected. My team also did so. They wouldn’t even talk to us! I has no idea that the assistant district attorney was regularly corresponding with Deshaun Watson’s lawyer by email and text; I didn’t know that the assistant district attorney actually went to [Rusty] Hardin’s office to discuss the cases; I didn’t know that Watson’s lawyer provided a PowerPoint that was to be used before the grand jury. I didn’t know, but now know after speaking to the investigating officer under oath, that the police investigation team was convinced that Watson had committed more than ten sexual crimes, or that the ADA has prevented the investigating officers from talking to the women who had filed lawsuits but had not filed criminal complaints. And what I do know is that, of the multiple criminal complainants in Houston, only one was asked by the ADA to appear in front of the grand jury, even though other victims were standing by to do so. As a taxpayer, and more importantly as the advocate for these women, I feel ‘home towned’ in my own home town, and duped. I think the public and all interested were duped as well. Makes you wonder. . . . Thank God for the civil justice system.”

Hardin puts much weight on the decision of the two grand juries not to indict Watson. The truth very well could be that Stallings knew that the level of attention Hardin was devoting to the pre-grand jury process was just a glimpse of what she would have to endure if Watson were indicted — and if Stallings then had to develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt for cases that boil down to a series of conflicting versions of events between two people with no witnesses.

Common sense suggests she simply didn’t want to pick a fight that she was convinced she’d lose. With Watson able to afford Hardin and his team of lawyers, who would aggressively defend Watson in every case and drain the resources and test the skills of Stallings and her staff, Stallings may have decided it just wasn’t worth spinning the wheels and eventually experiencing acquittal after acquittal based on the reality that reasonable doubt is much easier to conjure when the evidence is limited to the testimony of a single witness who inevitably would face a withering cross-examination from a skilled litigator like Hardin.

And so, instead of exercising her broad discretion to, as the saying goes, indict a ham sandwich, Hardin apparently made a more measured and balanced presentation aimed at nudging the grand jury away from biting off more than she was willing or able to chew.

The end result? No indictment. All things considered, it’s arguably no surprise.