Deshaun Watson is, by all accounts, a reprehensible human being. The Cleveland Browns quarterback has been sued by at least 27 different women for sexual assault and served an 11-week suspension during the 2022 NFL season after a wave of two dozen such suits were filed in succession against him.
In his three seasons with Cleveland, Watson has thrown just 19 touchdown passes in 19 games — Watson has, in fact, been accused of sexual assault more times than he has successfully executed his primary duty as quarterback.
While this ratio is unsettling, the ratio of cheers to boos directed toward Watson is even more so. Allegations and poor play aside, Browns fans have continued to cheer on their franchise quarterback.
Let’s rewind a little bit. Despite his recent poor play, Watson did earn his $230 million contract in Cleveland — as a Houston Texan, Watson finished third in offensive rookie of the year voting and proceeded to make the pro bowl in three consecutive seasons thereafter. However, it was after Watson left Houston — where nearly all of his alleged misconduct took place — that the bevy of legal action against him was levied. It is virtually certain that Watson’s legal troubles and tarnished reputation have squandered his play, in part causing him to post a quarterback rating of 23.4 this season, the worst mark in the NFL.
That’s the worst mark posted by a quarterback since 2011 Blaine Gabbert. For as much as my childhood self loved Blaine Gabbert, you do not want to find yourself compared to 2011 Gabbert in any statistical lens. Gabbert’s 2011 season is the second-worst in quarterback rating history — one which dates back to 2006.
You could confidently say that, in the past 20 years, 2024 Deshaun Watson is one of the three or four worst quarterbacks to ever grace the field for over 20 plays per game (the minimum required to qualify for the statistic). The names below him? 2011 Gabbert, 2010 Jimmy Clausen and 2006 Andrew Walter — the latter a player who I, a lifelong football fanatic, have never once heard of. In confirming that Walter is indeed a real person, I discovered that he boasts an unfathomable three to 16 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
This unnecessary disparagement of poor Walter and Gabbert is all to say that Deshaun Watson deserves to be booed. From a performance perspective, fans should not be content that their $230 million man has been so ineffective and has contributed so significantly to their losing ways. Browns fans have been through enough. Watson was supposed to be the reward for decades of suffering through laughably bad quarterback carousels.
Despite Watson’s play and the Browns’ 1-6 record with him under center, he hadn’t heard the ire of the Cleveland faithful until two Sundays ago. The chorus of boos that enshrouded Huntington Bank Field in Ohio did not ring out after an interception, nor a sack, a fumble, a safety or any other poor play.
They finally erupted after Watson ruptured his Achilles tendon during a routine dropback against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 7. Torn Achilles’ are notoriously among the most painful, heartbreaking and tough-to-come-back-from injuries. The Achilles tendon has single-handedly shattered hall-of-fame careers, derailed promising ones and left many more players as shells of their former selves.
You would, in short, be hard-pressed to name a more devastating thing that could happen to an athlete on the field.
As Watson writhed in excruciating pain on the Bengals’ 23-yard line, his pain was certainly amplified by the boos that reverberated in his direction.
After the game, Browns quarterback Jameis Winston and defensive end Myles Garrett came to Watson’s defense, the latter making use of the most load-bearing qualifier in history by saying Watson has been “a model citizen through college and most of the pros.” Unfortunately, Winston and Garrett are possibly the last two teammates one would want to vouch for one’s character; the former is an alleged rapist and the latter infamously assaulted another player mid-game.
Nonetheless, the booing that occurred after Watson went down has sparked a national debate: should fans have booed him after he sustained his injury?
In short, my answer is no.
Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been booing if I had been in Cleveland that day. I would’ve booed Watson when he stepped onto the field, when he was shown on the jumbotron and every time he stepped under center. I would’ve booed his incompletions, his checkdowns, his scrambles and every play in between. But I would not have booed his injury.
Deshaun Watson should not be in the National Football League. He should, by all accounts, be in a Houston jail cell. If Watson was not one of the most famous, popular and talented men in sports, he would be in that cell. However, as we’ve seen time and time again, people of this status are treated differently.
This treatment is in large part due to the NFL. It is the league that has worked vehemently, time and time again, to spurn investigations into and punishment of misconduct, from Dan Snyder’s appalling sexual abuse scandal to Ray Rice’s vicious assault of his then-fiancée.
When a player is accused of sexually assaulting 24 separate victims, you do not suspend them for 11 games. In any other workplace, you fire them. When a new accusation comes out every six months, you should not conveniently ignore it. Only in the NFL, an organization with billions of dollars at its disposal and a massive profit motive for keeping players on the field, does Deshaun Watson not get banned.
Moreover, had Watson not had hundreds of millions of dollars to his name, he would not have been able to settle out of court with nearly all of his victims. These offenses go unpunished only for the most rich and most powerful. Watson and the NFL represent both of those things.
The NFL got what it deserved when Watson got injured. They do not deserve to profit off the name and performance of a serial predator. You could say, further, that Watson got what he deserved when his Achilles snapped. I personally think that justice ought to come in the form of his banishment from the league, the forfeiture of his $230 million contract and the verdicts reached by a legal system unaffected by Watson’s undeserved riches.
We should boo the NFL for continually defending and inadequately punishing players mired in horrific legal trouble. We should boo Deshaun Watson for being a free man, allowed to do what he loves and make $45 million a year in the process. However, we should never boo an injured player. We should direct our more-than-justified boos toward the real problem, one much uglier and deeper than the injury of a struggling player.
