Deshaun Watson needs to go away, permanently

July 28, 2022

by Steve Thomas

Back in April, 2021, I went through the effort of reading all of the active Harris County, Texas, lawsuits against then Houston Texans and now Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson.  That column can be found here.  The basics of the situation are well known – a whole bunch of women, at the time 23, and later 24, accused Watson of inappropriate behavior during massages via civil lawsuits.  At least one woman later dropped her case. Watson found nearly all of these women on social media, and many of them were not full-time, professional massage therapists.  Watson, of course, could have received any massage therapy he needed from the Texans training staff.

Each of the cases contained various degrees of sexual misconduct by Watson, everything from exposing himself, touching the woman with his penis, to far worse, including three who alleged that Watson physically forced them to perform oral sex on him.

Watson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, is a very well-known and highly regarded Texas criminal defense lawyer.  Hardin strangely made the plaintiffs’ job a bit easier by making it known that at least 18 additional women performed massages on Watson and had no complaints.  The plaintiffs’ attorney, Tony Buzbee – who is another high profile Houston-area attorney who was once a serious candidate in a Houston mayoral election – added that he had turned down another handful of potential plaintiffs.  For those keeping score, that’s at least 45 different women who Watson paid to give him massages in under two years.  And that number doesn’t include the unknown, unstated number of women who no doubt happily took Watson’s money and did what he wanted.  Essentially, then, basic math says that Watson was probably cruising social media on a regular basis and went to meet one of these women on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.  The allegations generally are very creepy, worse than what the media reported.

Thanks to the cowardice of the NFL, which for unstated but suspicious reasons refused to put Watson on the Commissioner’s Exempt List, the Texans were forced to carry him the entire year as an unplayable part of the 53-man active roster, thereby putting them at a competitive disadvantage.  Essentially, the NFL passed the buck on discipline onto the Texans, which was pathetic and something for which the NFL should be ashamed.

The Harris County District Attorney tried to get Watson indicated by the grand jury, but failed, I suspect because of a combination of (1) a complete lack of physical evidence, and (2) star-gazing by the grand jury members.

Then, a couple of months ago, Hardin announced that Watson had settled all but three of the active civil suits.  I haven’t bothered to go back to see which of the civil lawsuits remain active, but my guess is that the three remaining cases are probably the three that were more serious, that contained the forced oral sex allegations.

Soon thereafter, the NFL finally grew a backbone and initiated disciplinary proceedings under the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s personal conduct policy.  The case soon ended up in front of an independent arbitrator under a new, agreed-upon disciplinary process.  The hearing took place approximately three weeks ago and lasted several days.  The arbitrator took the matter under advisement and hasn’t issued his opinion yet, although he is expected to do so soon in light of the pending start to training camp and the regular season.  The NFL reportedly asked for an indefinite suspension with the right to apply for reinstatement after a year, with Watson’s representatives lobbying for substantially less.

Frankly, Watson needs to never play professional football again.  I put some thought into comparable disciplinary matters in American sports, and I couldn’t come up with a good comparable.  I couldn’t find a single player in either professional football, baseball, or basketball who had the sheer number of simultaneous accusers.  Many players have been accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct, but none on the scale of Watson’s accusations.  I don’t know how the NFL can in good faith continue to claim that it supports women’s rights with Watson in the league.  The Browns made the situation far worse by signing Watson to an absurd $230M fully guaranteed contract, but that aside, the NFL would be worst and much more controversial by Watson being allowed to return to the field of play.

In my view, the only reasonable response is for Watson to lose his NFL career.  Anything short of that would be a sharp blow to the credibility of the NFL.  Get gone, Deshaun.  Go away.