The failure to eject Deshaun Watson ultimately traces to money
Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson should have been sent to the showers prematurely for shoving an official on Monday night. The NFL justified the failure to eject him with a statement that doesn’t mesh with the video.
So why wasn't he ejected?
An unnamed club employee "who works with rules" made this observation to Kalyn Kahler of TheAthletic.com.
“The language is very clear on this,” the source said. “Error was on the league office not calling in the ejection because that’s their standard and up to them to police it equally.”
The source is right. The pipeline from 345 Park Avenue to the stadium allows the league office to direct officials to eject players who deserve to be ejected. Watson should have been, but he wasn't.
“You talk about ‘scripted,’” another unnamed team source told Kahler. “This is why. [Because] they don’t enforce rules fairly.”
They don't. In this case, they didn't want to eject a starting quarterback from a prime-time, standalone game.
The NFL should have a firewall between its business considerations and its football operations. It doesn't, as demonstrated last year by the candid connection made between aggressive enforcement of the roughing-the-passer rule and TV ratings premised on starting quarterbacks being available to play.
If Watson had been ejected, plenty of people might have changed the channel, or whatever the cord-cutters do when switching from one show to another. And so, if anyone else on the Browns had done what Watson did, that player would have been ejected. But not the starting quarterback.
That's the explanation. The rules take a back seat to the big mamoo. It shouldn't be that way. It just is.
