After apparently eliminating the Cleveland Browns as a potential suitor, the quarterback did a 180 and chose the Browns. He had a few reasons to change his mind, too — 230,000,000 to be exact. Several outlets have reported that Watson’s new five-year, $230 million contract is “fully guaranteed.” That’s $80 million more than the previous record for guaranteed money. In return, the Texans will reportedly receive three first-round picks and two additional picks. Earlier today, we took a look at Cleveland’s plight when it appeared Watson had narrowed his choice down to Atlanta and New Orleans.
But as the great Brian Johnson of AC/DC once said, money talks. This is an unbelievably steep price, but the Browns eventually gave the Texans and Watson offers they could not refuse.
Of course, this has been a complicated courtship for all teams. While cleared criminally, Watson is still facing 22 civil suits. The accusations are damning and Browns ownership must answer some difficult questions at the podium.
There’s never been any questioning Watson’s game. He’s one of the best players in the sport.
Incredible that Colin Kapernick was blackballed from the league for protesting police brutality but Watson has nearly two dozen accusations of sexual assault and he gets financially rewarded with a place of his choosing to continue playing?
I feel like this can and will blow up in their face. The Browns give up all that to get Watson, he underperforms and the front office could be out after two years. However, if it succeeds and they win, man that’s a complicated legacy.
You won, but at what cost? Maybe people will forgive and forget if they win, but it’s awfully hard to forgive and forget for a sports championship.
Owners were afraid of the fans when it came to Kapernick. Nobody wanted their fans boycotting the team because they signed him even if he was talented enough to be an NFL starter.
Its remarkable that front offices believe that Watson is more palatable to their fan bases than Kapernick was. To some degree that is an indictment of us - the fans.
And I know that Watson is much better than Kap ever was, but its all about whether your fan bases will stick with you and Cleveland thinks that they can weather the storm.
As long as the football keeps moving down the field, the NFL literally does not give a shit what happens off of it. Not a great time to be a female fan.
They'll regret that contract. It's just so hard to win with that kind of outlay. Gonna require compromises at other positions, as we just saw with GB sending Adams off. The Browns will be better but not better enough....
Separately....Watson? Just yuk. I don't care if the prosecutors decided not to charge him, all of those women are not just money grubbers. The simplest explanation is the easiest...Watson is a perv and if I were a team owner i wouldn't want him anywhere near my female employees.
Where's there's smoke there's fire, and sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prove. It's disgusting, but as you guys talked about in the pod, it's not surprising given the history with Roth.
Rodgers' contract debacle and now Watson's 100% guaranteed contract just proves that character no longer matters in this country. You can be a serial sexual predator but as long as you can play the kid's game all is forgiven. Makes me want to puke.
And what if Watson is accused of similar offenses in Cleveland? Will it be covered up? Is he already being required to undergo therapy or take classes as it's pretty obvious he is clueless when it comes to respecting boundaries, or at least he has a gross feeling of entitlement.
I'm late to the game here, but agreed with all these comments about how this is disgusting, esp the guaranteed money / signing bonus part.
Someone said that female fans should boycott. Shouldn't all fans boycott? Like, at what point can I keep telling myself that it's okay to shell out money for NFL Gamepass (to watch games from abroad), despite allllllll of this evidence about how shitty an institution the NFL is? It's already bad enough given the violent nature of the game and the utter lack of care "the shield" shows for the health of retired players. It's also bad enough that thousands of boys / young men DON'T make it in the NFL, DON'T get compensated financially for ramming their heads against one another ... and still may suffer the same abject consequences.
But then you add the layers of ridiculousness of late: the "slap on the wrist" $10M fine for Snyder to hand over the reigns to his wife and, yeah, stick around the building. The legacies of players like OJ and Ray Lewis. The ridiculous penalizing of Calvin Ridley "in the name of honor of the game," compared to the track record. Countless examples of domestic abuse and then forgetting about it.
And now ... this. Peter King said it best in FMIA today -- of course ppl are innocent until proven guilty, but in what other industry would someone with 22 outstanding civil cases of sexual assault be given five years of guaranteed money? (Not to mention that money being $230M.) And to be the guaranteed face of the franchise, a city steeped in football tradition, a community that prides itself on hard work and authenticity, etc.
...When is it enough for fans to stop watching -- not women, but all of us? This may be the final straw for yours truly. I have flirted with stopping watching the NFL in the past, but have always been drawn back in. This is because I am very much the type of person the NFL wants to attract and retain: I grew up idolizing the Chiefs, loving Sundays at Arrowhead. I played backyard football with the neighborhood kids for hours upon hours every summer, perhaps the purest physical expression of fun I've ever had. My text chains with my brother to this day are filled with back-and-forth about Chiefs strategy etc. I'm an expat, so the pressure is even less for me -- I'm not bombarded with media and merch and all that. But, fundamentally, part of my identity has always been linked to being a Kansas City Chiefs fan. And the drama in recent years has been too tempting to ignore.
But at some point there's a reckoning with myself: how am I spending my time, and money? Don't I implicitly - or explicitly - support a system that allows for the Deshaun signing to happen, if I myself am investing time and money to do so? My and my family's livelihoods do not depend on the NFL, so what am I doing supporting it?
I realize this may be an unpopular opinion in a forum dedicated to ... the NFL. And I've loved Tyler's angle to all of this - I supported GoLong early on because I like reading long-form stuff, and I like that the point of GoLong is to get to know players as people, not as assets. Maybe part of me thinks that "how I support the NFL" is somehow different, or better, than the masses. But let's be real - some of my money and some of my time go to the Shield. Would I actively support anything else that's so backwards, so damaging to society?
I prefer my backyard football games when I was a kid.
What you write describes many of us and the situation we find ourselves in. I've been a Packer fan since the early 60s; devotion to the team and the sport from an early age. It became clear that there were bad actors in the sport at an early age, but I could gloss it over because it was just a few of them. I'm sure a lot was covered up and not reported, too.
I spent a good ten plus years immersed in fantasy football, and haven't done it for two years now and find I don't miss it at all. But the family traditions with my now adult kids and older kin of watching and following the Pack will be hard to break. Perhaps the descent into mediocrity that feels inevitable will help me along.
Since Bernie Kosar I have not been this excited for my team. I know Deshaun is facing some suits so let us have faith in the judicial system to sort it all out. He is one of the best! Baker just let his true personality show through. We saw him at the Senior Bowl and knew exactly what we were getting. Well, now that Dorsey and that regime are gone we have been on a much better path. I look forward to getting back to where we were in the 50's and 60's.
Sad for the Cleveland management to embarrass itself and its fans. Read Peter King's FMIA column today for an incisive opinion via profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
The whole thing is utterly gross. 22 pending accusations. 22!! And no one is even pretending to care. This may be a new low for the NFL, and that's saying something. Who knows though, maybe they'll make up for it by writing "end sexism" in the endzones. At the end of the day, just another corrupt institution where money is the only thing that matters--certainly not women.
Ha! How ridiculous would that be, if the endzones had "end sexism" stenciled across them. So ridiculous that they may even do it... Agreed with your take here.
Don't they need to keep him to hedge against a suspension? If Watson gets suspended for a significant portion of the season, don't they have to roll with Baker to keep the playoffs in sight?
A large part of building a winning team is the attitude and cohesion of the players. Hard to figure Mayfield would be invested in helping the Browns out here...he's going to be looking to start somewhere else. Maybe Seattle. They are signing Jacoby Brissett, so that tells the tale.
Ben, I think you are right. But if Watson were to miss 12 games for example, you can't just waste the year running with a replacement level QB. They have to have another QB that can get them close.
They could also trade him as a half season rental to a team with a QB injury. But the Mayfield drama on top of the Watson drama. Yikes.
Incredible that Colin Kapernick was blackballed from the league for protesting police brutality but Watson has nearly two dozen accusations of sexual assault and he gets financially rewarded with a place of his choosing to continue playing?
I feel like this can and will blow up in their face. The Browns give up all that to get Watson, he underperforms and the front office could be out after two years. However, if it succeeds and they win, man that’s a complicated legacy.
You won, but at what cost? Maybe people will forgive and forget if they win, but it’s awfully hard to forgive and forget for a sports championship.
Owners were afraid of the fans when it came to Kapernick. Nobody wanted their fans boycotting the team because they signed him even if he was talented enough to be an NFL starter.
Its remarkable that front offices believe that Watson is more palatable to their fan bases than Kapernick was. To some degree that is an indictment of us - the fans.
And I know that Watson is much better than Kap ever was, but its all about whether your fan bases will stick with you and Cleveland thinks that they can weather the storm.
I think what the Watson trade shows is that if you are a great player, nothing else matters.
That’s a good take on it.
I, for one, hope that Baker goes somewhere and consistently beats the Browns in the play-offs.
As long as the football keeps moving down the field, the NFL literally does not give a shit what happens off of it. Not a great time to be a female fan.
They'll regret that contract. It's just so hard to win with that kind of outlay. Gonna require compromises at other positions, as we just saw with GB sending Adams off. The Browns will be better but not better enough....
Separately....Watson? Just yuk. I don't care if the prosecutors decided not to charge him, all of those women are not just money grubbers. The simplest explanation is the easiest...Watson is a perv and if I were a team owner i wouldn't want him anywhere near my female employees.
The next governor of NYS will Andrew Cuomo because he wasn’t impeached and none of the prosecutors brought charges. It’s not just isolated to sports.
Where's there's smoke there's fire, and sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prove. It's disgusting, but as you guys talked about in the pod, it's not surprising given the history with Roth.
Rodgers' contract debacle and now Watson's 100% guaranteed contract just proves that character no longer matters in this country. You can be a serial sexual predator but as long as you can play the kid's game all is forgiven. Makes me want to puke.
Rodgers may be an asshole, but he shouldn't be put in the same sentence as Watson, who is a serial sexual predator.
I was simply pointing out how the NFL doesnt care about character. I was in no way implying what Rodgers has done is as bad as Watson.
And what if Watson is accused of similar offenses in Cleveland? Will it be covered up? Is he already being required to undergo therapy or take classes as it's pretty obvious he is clueless when it comes to respecting boundaries, or at least he has a gross feeling of entitlement.
I'm late to the game here, but agreed with all these comments about how this is disgusting, esp the guaranteed money / signing bonus part.
Someone said that female fans should boycott. Shouldn't all fans boycott? Like, at what point can I keep telling myself that it's okay to shell out money for NFL Gamepass (to watch games from abroad), despite allllllll of this evidence about how shitty an institution the NFL is? It's already bad enough given the violent nature of the game and the utter lack of care "the shield" shows for the health of retired players. It's also bad enough that thousands of boys / young men DON'T make it in the NFL, DON'T get compensated financially for ramming their heads against one another ... and still may suffer the same abject consequences.
But then you add the layers of ridiculousness of late: the "slap on the wrist" $10M fine for Snyder to hand over the reigns to his wife and, yeah, stick around the building. The legacies of players like OJ and Ray Lewis. The ridiculous penalizing of Calvin Ridley "in the name of honor of the game," compared to the track record. Countless examples of domestic abuse and then forgetting about it.
And now ... this. Peter King said it best in FMIA today -- of course ppl are innocent until proven guilty, but in what other industry would someone with 22 outstanding civil cases of sexual assault be given five years of guaranteed money? (Not to mention that money being $230M.) And to be the guaranteed face of the franchise, a city steeped in football tradition, a community that prides itself on hard work and authenticity, etc.
...When is it enough for fans to stop watching -- not women, but all of us? This may be the final straw for yours truly. I have flirted with stopping watching the NFL in the past, but have always been drawn back in. This is because I am very much the type of person the NFL wants to attract and retain: I grew up idolizing the Chiefs, loving Sundays at Arrowhead. I played backyard football with the neighborhood kids for hours upon hours every summer, perhaps the purest physical expression of fun I've ever had. My text chains with my brother to this day are filled with back-and-forth about Chiefs strategy etc. I'm an expat, so the pressure is even less for me -- I'm not bombarded with media and merch and all that. But, fundamentally, part of my identity has always been linked to being a Kansas City Chiefs fan. And the drama in recent years has been too tempting to ignore.
But at some point there's a reckoning with myself: how am I spending my time, and money? Don't I implicitly - or explicitly - support a system that allows for the Deshaun signing to happen, if I myself am investing time and money to do so? My and my family's livelihoods do not depend on the NFL, so what am I doing supporting it?
I realize this may be an unpopular opinion in a forum dedicated to ... the NFL. And I've loved Tyler's angle to all of this - I supported GoLong early on because I like reading long-form stuff, and I like that the point of GoLong is to get to know players as people, not as assets. Maybe part of me thinks that "how I support the NFL" is somehow different, or better, than the masses. But let's be real - some of my money and some of my time go to the Shield. Would I actively support anything else that's so backwards, so damaging to society?
I prefer my backyard football games when I was a kid.
What you write describes many of us and the situation we find ourselves in. I've been a Packer fan since the early 60s; devotion to the team and the sport from an early age. It became clear that there were bad actors in the sport at an early age, but I could gloss it over because it was just a few of them. I'm sure a lot was covered up and not reported, too.
I spent a good ten plus years immersed in fantasy football, and haven't done it for two years now and find I don't miss it at all. But the family traditions with my now adult kids and older kin of watching and following the Pack will be hard to break. Perhaps the descent into mediocrity that feels inevitable will help me along.
Nicely done.
Since Bernie Kosar I have not been this excited for my team. I know Deshaun is facing some suits so let us have faith in the judicial system to sort it all out. He is one of the best! Baker just let his true personality show through. We saw him at the Senior Bowl and knew exactly what we were getting. Well, now that Dorsey and that regime are gone we have been on a much better path. I look forward to getting back to where we were in the 50's and 60's.
Sad for the Cleveland management to embarrass itself and its fans. Read Peter King's FMIA column today for an incisive opinion via profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
The whole thing is utterly gross. 22 pending accusations. 22!! And no one is even pretending to care. This may be a new low for the NFL, and that's saying something. Who knows though, maybe they'll make up for it by writing "end sexism" in the endzones. At the end of the day, just another corrupt institution where money is the only thing that matters--certainly not women.
Ha! How ridiculous would that be, if the endzones had "end sexism" stenciled across them. So ridiculous that they may even do it... Agreed with your take here.
I think every female fan should boycott the nfl, you just saw what teams and the league think of you
What can the Browns get for Baker?
Don't they need to keep him to hedge against a suspension? If Watson gets suspended for a significant portion of the season, don't they have to roll with Baker to keep the playoffs in sight?
A large part of building a winning team is the attitude and cohesion of the players. Hard to figure Mayfield would be invested in helping the Browns out here...he's going to be looking to start somewhere else. Maybe Seattle. They are signing Jacoby Brissett, so that tells the tale.
Ben, I think you are right. But if Watson were to miss 12 games for example, you can't just waste the year running with a replacement level QB. They have to have another QB that can get them close.
They could also trade him as a half season rental to a team with a QB injury. But the Mayfield drama on top of the Watson drama. Yikes.
As was said earlier, I figure the Browns already know exactly what the penalty will be. My guess is 6-8 games.
btw...in any announcement of penalties for Watson I'm sure that last year will be counted as "time served".
He won’t play for them.
Nothing. Teams know the Browns have to move him. They will show no interest until he is released and teams can then offer him a chance.
No matter what one thinks of Murphy and Gute - they are always geniuses compared to Haslam
Do they have commitments that he won’t end up on the commissioners exempt list?
My guess is that there will be some sort of suspension and that the Browns know what it's gonna be.
Agree no way they gave up all that capital without a clue. Thanks.