FMIA: The Truth And Shame Of The Deshaun Watson Trade, And How The Davante Adams Mega-Deal Got Done

I am not going to write about the difference Deshaun Watson makes in the Cleveland Browns as a football team. There will be time for that—five years. Five obscenely expensive years, in which the Browns will pay a question mark $2.7 million per game to play football.

I am going to write about the Browns selling their souls for a football player who has 22 open accusations of sexual assault or sexual harassment against him.

This is all necessary, of course, because the Browns acquired Watson from Houston in a blockbuster trade on Friday. Cleveland sent three first-round picks (including the No. 13 overall pick in April’s draft), a 2023 third-rounder and a 2024 fourth-rounder in exchange for Watson and a 2024 fifth-rounder. As part of the deal, Cleveland gave Watson a new five-year, $230 million contract.

I don’t think any team should go into business with a player—though cleared of criminal charges—who has 22 women accusing him of indecent acts. Thirty-one teams should have risen up and said, We might be interested in this great football player, but only after we know the full scope of what we’re dealing. The fact is, they don’t know. Watson could be faultless, and he could have run into 22 women, all of whom are lying, as his attorney Rusty Hardin thinks. That would be an incredible coincidence, 22 women all lying. But let the legal system play this out.

What happens, do you think, if the cases run their course and the Browns find they’ve handed $230 million, guaranteed, to a man who loses some of these civil suits, or one, or all? What happens if even some of the ghoulish and sexually graphic offenses described in the reporting of Jenny Vrentas for Sports Illustrated in the last year are true? Extrapolate. How would