At what point could the Deshaun Watson trade be dubbed a disaster for the Browns?
As the strange vibe lingers between the Browns and quarterback Deshaun Watson, some questions are fair to ask and other questions (for now) are not.
Here's one question that is very fair to ponder. At what point can the Browns' trade for Watson be dubbed a disaster?
Rewind to 2022. Four teams wanted Watson — Saints, Falcons, Panthers, Browns. Each team essentially pre-qualified to have negotiations with Watson by making a sizable trade offer to the Texans (more on that in a bit). By entering the fray for Watson, the Browns permanently fractured their relationship with Baker Mayfield. And so, when Watson made the Browns the first team out from the final four, the Browns got very desperate, offering him an unprecedented five-year, $230 million contract with every penny fully guaranteed at signing.
Watson accepted. With so much focus on the monetary commitment to Watson, not much attention has been given to the low-cost draft picks the analytics-obsessed Browns sacrificed to get him. First-round pick in 2022. First-round pick in 2023. First-round pick in 2024. Third-round pick in 2023. Fourth-round pick in 2022. Fourth-round pick in 2024.
That's a lot to give up. And, in the grand scheme of things, not a lot of money to pay to have those players around for multiple years into the future.
What have they gotten in return? Six meaningless late-season games in 2022, after his eleven-game suspension. And since Watson wasn't suspended for the entire year, those six games chewed up the first of the five years of his contract, giving them only four more years with Watson. (There were reports last year that some owners wanted the NFL to suspend Watson for less than a year, for that specific reason.)
This year, Watson has played in four games. Days after he had his best game as a Brown, in Week 3 against the Titans, news of the shoulder injury emerged.
He now has an injury that has kept him from playing (but for a brief appearance last week) in three games. It's still not clear when he'll be back, as evidenced by his comments from Thursday's session with the media.
And while I'm in the general neighborhood of Watson's most recent comments to the media, there's one more point that must be made. Watson was asked for the first time about speculation regarding his general desire to play football, and his specific desire to play for the Browns.
"Why wouldn’t I want to play?" he said in response to the first question.
"Why would I do that?" he replied in response to the second.
He's the reality. Watson decided — only months after signing a market-value, long-term deal — that he no longer wanted to play for the Texans. And he didn't play at all in 2021 (and got paid his full salary) in order to accomplish that objective.
This background becomes at least a little bit relevant now. Watson already has decided in the not-too-distant past that he didn't want to play for the team with which he had signed a major contract. He sat out a full year while awaiting his ticket out of Houston. And even with the 20-plus lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct during massage-therapy sessions, he got what he wanted.
What if he no longer wants what he got? Again, it's too early to come to any conclusions. It's definitely not too early to remember what happened when he wanted to no longer play for the Texans.
And it's definitely not too early to wonder when the massive investment the Browns made to get Watson, including the sacrifice of six draft picks that could have been foundational players for years to come, can be considered the biggest trade blunder this side of Herschel Walker.
