This isn’t surprising, but I do think it is still shocking to some that a healthy Top 5 quarterback in Deshaun Watson will be riding the bench the entire season.
If Watson would have gone to Texans after his 22 massage accusations and told them, he changed his mind and didn’t want to be traded. He would have been starting Week 1.
There is now a scenario, according to my sources, where Watson potentially won’t step on a football field for two years.
It is heavily focused on if the grand jury indicts him on any criminal charges. I talk about on the BSO Substack on how his asking for trade might affect the police investigation.
If he is indicted on criminal charges, he will immediately go on the Commissioner’s exempt list. This, combined with the civil cases, will almost guarantee to wipe out his 2021 season.
By 2022 assuming he settles/wins/loses the civil cases and comes to some plea agreement on the criminal charges, and there is no jail time, that is when the NFL will come down with their official punishment.
They may take into consideration that he didn’t play all of 2021 and go light on him, but I have to bring up Antonio Brown as an example of why that might not happen.
Brown was put on the Commissioner’s exempt list after texting some threats to his accuser. He only played one game in 2019. He cleared up his civil and criminal case before the 2020 season but was still suspended for 8 games.
Brown had one accuser with a civil case and one criminal case with a delivery truck driver.
Watson has 22 accusers with civil cases and potentially 10 accusers with criminal cases. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that Watson could be suspended for an entire season unless he was found completely innocent of everything.
We shall see what happens.
Flip the page for the women speaking about their interaction with Deshaun Watson.