NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Emergency Reaction to Deshaun Watson Ruling

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

A virtual room filled with some heroes - Dan Hanzus, Marc Sessler, and Gregg Rosenthal convene quickly to discuss the outcome of Judge Sue L. Robinson’s recommendation that Deshaun Watson be suspended the first 6 games of the 2022 season.NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, everybody. Daniel Jeremiah here. And I'm Bucky Brooks. On Move the 6th, we take you inside the game from breaking down college prospects and NFL rookies to evaluating team building philosophies, coaching trends, and how front offices construct winning rosters. We study the tape, talk to decision makers, and give you a perspective you won't find anywhere else.

It's everything you need to understand the why behind what happens on Sunday. Don't miss it. Listen to the Move the Sticks podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcus Grant. And I'm Michael Florio, and together we host the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast. Ready to dominate your fantasy league this season? Then you need the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast, your ultimate source for player news, draft tips, and winning strategies. Whether you're a rookie manager or a fantasy vet. We've got the insight to help you crush your opponents.

Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL. Visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. Just minutes ago, Judge Sue L. Robinson has informed the parties that Deshawn Watson should be suspended six games. This comes after the three-day disciplinary hearing. in June the long-awaited ruling for the Browns quarterback, the NFLPA, and Deshaun Watson put out a statement late yesterday saying that they would not appeal the ruling. So six games will stand from the standpoint of Deshawn Watson and from the NFLPA.

Welcome to around the NFL, Dan Hansis, Mark Sessler, Greg Rosenthal. Listen, we thought about holding our reaction until our scheduled show this week on Tuesday. But in the end, you know what? We talked about it and we recognized that this has been the story, capital T, capital S of the 2022 offseason, unfortunately. And let's be real, the potential outcome currently in place right now has a major ripple effect in the AFC and the NFL, the 22 Browns, with the Sean Watson behind center for the majority of the season, are a Super Bowl contender, whether or not the vast majority of the public eye are into that idea. And you heard Ian at the top, we've all been reading about it all morning. We all kind of were bracing for something along these lines, but the story is not over yet, Greg Rosenthal.

Yeah, I think that's my key takeaway. And it leads like this podcast, for instance, in a strange place because I feel like we don't have the final answer. And it's one of the reasons I wanted to do the podcast was just to make sure our listeners and people understood that. Because frankly, I didn't understand that as of a couple days ago. I don't think a lot of people really understood the disciplinary process.

First of all, it's never happened before. It's part of this new collective bargaining agreement. When Ian made that report, the key word in his report to me was recommend. And that's really what all Sue Robinson is doing here. She's recommending a six-game suspension. And the next question to me is just like, how important is this to Roger Goodell? Because ultimately, Roger Goodell has the final say. The appeals process, which they collect.

bargained for goes to either Roger Goodell or a designee someone that he chooses to hear that appeal. If there was no suspension, then there could be no appeal. It's over. But now that she has decided, and we can get into it, like that there was wrongdoing. It is absolutely up to the NFL and Roger Goodell whether they want to raise the six games suspension to something more. And for context, they recommended during this hearing that he be suspended for at least one year. So to me, this is an incomplete story as of now. And the NFL, just as we're starting to tape, release the statement that didn't say much, but it did point out that they now have three days in which to file an appeal, and they will

decide to do that or not, but they will, you know, take that time. It is a story that's just far from over. I really would expect the NFL to appeal. They're in a tough spot, though, because, you know, technically from the construct of the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, this is what was pushed for, that it goes out of the hands of Roger Goodell having the initial, say, an investigation to this independent arbiter. That's what's happened.

And now, you know, either they say the process that we've fought for or at least agreed on is faulty still, or we ignore the way this looks to so many different fans. Because I just think about, you know, we're on Twitter all morning, the reaction of our female colleagues, both at NFL media and beyond, and many of our male colleagues too, but just it is, I don't think the six games is a shocking result. I mean, a lot of people were sort of putting it in that zone as a real possibility. But it's a disappointment because I think of the fact that, you know,

you've got DeAndre Hopkins six games for PEDs. You've got someone like Josh Gordon who missed, I think, 25 games for smoking weed. It just looks disproportionate to all of that. There really isn't a precedent for this case, I don't think, but I would be surprised that the NFL is done with this. I think that if they want to really look at this whole case and say, this is how we feel about this kind of behavior from a player, they're not done. There's going to be, and then this could drag on now into the regular season. happens because the NFL PA could reverse and say, we're fighting this in court. I mean, this is not going to end in a couple weeks. Yeah, this is, I was just about to bring it up with

Tom Pell Sero's reporting here that the NFL can go down this road. The NFL with Roger Goodell prominently involved after the league had, believes this would be a longer suspension. It feels like this is the next step. They have three days to announce whether they're going to appeal. Let's assume for a moment that there is an appeal. And let's assume for a moment that the, suspension goes from six games to something higher. Here's Tom Pelliser on Good Morning Football breaking down how this thing could go deeper and deeper and drag longer and longer into the season.

If the NFL does in fact appeal and if the discipline for Deshaun Watson increases, I would fully expect the NFLPA at that point after firing the warning shot saying they won't appeal last night would take this to federal court, would create as much chaos as they can into the regular season. go. So this chaos is the word the Pelliserro used, Greg. So I think the NFL from their perspective, you know, this is also obviously an image issue for the NFL. It's an ugly story. I think they're

probably going to be weighing all these things like, okay, is six games enough in our mind? No, but do we want to keep fighting this and make this a major story of the 2022 NFL season after it just essentially marred their offseason? That's part of this. Right. That's why this, NFL PA statement that was released Sunday night that Tom just referred to was kind of a red herring because they said, yeah, we're not going to appeal the ruling that the NFL goes down because they know they're going to win anything anyways, you know, because it's Roger Goodell hearing it. But the fact that they're putting it out there, and Tom isn't just reporting this in a vacuum, that they could take it to federal court and string this out. If you remember, Ezekiel Elliott, a very similar situation happened. And that actually isn't. It's not a one-to-one comparison, but it is an interesting recent case where Zeke O'Ele, who the NFL decided credibly did commit some domestic violence and they suspended him for six games. And that was one incident. And I thought it was interesting that to Robinson, the former U.S. district court judge,

said in this result that even though there were all of these victims, and to be clear, Watson just settled with four more victims, so that's 23 that he is settled with and is paying money to, and a Texan settled with 30 of them. She pointed out that there was no physical violence, and she made a difference between that there wasn't violent acts. The only thing with that federal case, and we're not lawyers, and this is not our strength, this is not what we want to be diving deep into, is like, there's no rule that a federal judge would want to hear the case. that they would believe that it was okay. They could slap it down immediately.

There is, if the NFL, if the NFL's goal was to get Watson suspended one year, like their perfect outcome would be they do the appeal. Goodell or whoever he decides, decides it's a year. The NFLPA tries to take it to court. And immediately, they could say, no, we don't think that's a credible thing to hear and slap it down and it's over right there. So that's a potential outcome there. Mark, the one thing I would push back just slightly about is about like the process, you know,

whether it would make their process look silly because ultimately it's like Roger Goodell is now giving the final answer, even though they were trying to make it look like he didn't. And that's true. I think in a perfect world, they would have to love Sue Robinson to just give the year. And then he doesn't have to get involved. But they negotiated this process. Like the appeal with Goodell having the final hammer is the process. And I'm sure that the NFLPA, when they were going back and forth,

we're trying to prevent that from happening and they gave up on it. That ultimately, it's sort of for show. And yes, they like having the arbiter to start. But in the end, it's kind of like that GM coach who has the final say, who has the final power discussion we always have with teams. Roger Goodell has the final power in all of these cases because as long as there's some suspension, he gets to decide on the appeal. And to me, like, they bargained in the NFLPA.

agreed to that that he has the final say. Oh, that's fair. I mean, I, first of all, I think that if you're Roger Goodell and you're the NFL, what needs to come out of this, this is my opinion, that you need to tell fans and people and supporters of the sport and those who cover the sport that justice be served in a way that most can agree with. And I think in general, you look at the six game suspension and it feels really light in comparison to other suspensions for much less, she called it egregious behavior for much less egregious human behavior than what we know about the Deshawn Watson case. So if you're Goodell, like, I think this is a case where, oh, yes, we did agree to this new process, but you do have that power to step in and change the result. I mean,

the one thing I'd say, though, is that her fact finding, they're not going to reopen the case and go through it all again. That's all sealed up and done. So this could go to court. Do you know that for sure? That's what I read over and over and that's what was reported. It's crazy to me that we don't see that report. And they established a precedent, which was new in the Washington commander's investigation into Dan Snyder a couple years ago. But that was new. Usually, you know, you remember deflategate, we got like, we got two Russian novels out of deflategate. And it's weird to me that there's a 15 page document where she explained her findings that were not going to see. And maybe there could be pressure to get that out there too. A couple of the things that

I don't believe that we touched on here that so yeah six games sue robinson recommends uh there's no fine and as we know when the story first broke and we learned about the nature of the contract the guaranteed contract the the browns had cooked up to lure deshaun watson to Cleveland um the first year of salary was very it's a very backloaded contract so it turns out to be about 340 grand i'm reading so 333 in one place 343 in another so the money uh in terms of what this is going to cost to sean watson if this holds is obviously for him a drop in the bucket also part of the ruling from robinson states that he's not able to get massages uh from any any place that's not essentially team mandated which is just i mean when you take a step back how absurd

that this is even something that's a major part of this but yeah Deshaun Watson can't do that on his own anymore because of everything that's happened. It has to be from the team. And from a Cleveland Brown standpoint, again, you imagine there are some high fives going on in Berea because this is playing out so far exactly how they hoped it would play out, which is we got this guy in the building. We finally have solved our quarterback conundrum of the last 40 years. And the suspension, they probably made the deal initially.

thinking there's a decent chance given everything it's going on that we're going to have to punt on year one of the contract and everything it goes along with it. Well, that's no longer the case. If this, again, stands as it does, the Browns just have to tread water for six weeks. And if Watson is as good as he has been in his career, and this has forgotten now a little bit because he hasn't played in so long. He didn't play last season, of course, with the Texans. He's a damn good quarterback. And in that NFC, AFC North, I think the Browns are a major player with Watson if he hits the ground running there. So this is, this has a major ripple effect.

And, you know, you can, you could be very down about the Browns and what they were willing to give up to get this player in their building. But from their perspective, they won. This is, this is a big deal for them if this is how it holds, just the way it is. You know, I was listening to like local Cleveland radio this morning just to kind of get that take and, you know, listening to fans and some players they had on. And like, I think their perspective. is so many from many of them, so different than what we've talked about and our angle on it

and how we generally, the three of us seem to feel. It's just, I think they do view a large chunk of the fans are just like, we're over this situation, we're tired of this story, he's going to be back playing. And I can't reconcile that personally, but that's just out there. That's going to be out there with every fan base. And, you know, at this point, he's scheduled to come back October 23rd against the Ravens. And, you know, people are saying, well, six games is a big chunk of the season. We know that that's just not true. true in the NFL. I mean, there's so much time for them to make up ground, depending what happened from a football perspective. But I just cannot believe that we come out of

this in the end with a six-game suspension. I just, I don't think, part of this is this started with Ray Rice. I mean, it didn't start there, but that was a major flashpoint with how fans and people in general viewed the NFL's process on things like this. That was egregious. This is egregious. If this ends up at six games, I'll be stunned. I just, I can't believe this is the final move by the league. I agree, which is why I'm struggling to say that much definitive because I want to find out the final answer first. Like before we move on to what it's going to be for the Browns, I want to know what the answer is of how many games Jacobi Brisset. And I just think for all the fans celebrating and for all the people understandably frustrated with this result, my take

would just be wait like let let's see because the NFL went pretty hard recommending minimum year during the hearing that that was pretty hard like they went to the mat trying to get them suspended that far saying that they wanted to and i and if they really like believe that in their souls that that was the right thing to do they can do it that's it like they can choose like if the same people who are pushing for the year's suspension are going to get to decide if he still is suspended for a year and maybe that'll get mixed up in federal court cases maybe not and that might be a long shot for the NFLPA to overturn anyway so it all just feels incomplete and everyone look if you missed most of our Watson episodes in the off season

God bless you. You know, it's not like we enjoy this topic. But I think we've been pretty clear about where we stand on it. And we've talked a lot about it. You mentioned Ray Rice. Just one last quick thing is just there wasn't video of this. And no one cared about Ray Rice that much until there was video. And it does make you think, like, look, if there was a video of this, not that anyone

who would want to see any of it, like that would have an impact. the amount of women that he ended up settling with out of court is just hard to wrap your mind around. And I think the NFL knows that like any talking point from the agent, which is clearly coming from the agent, it's like, well, the NFL has to decide whether they make their process look bad. It's like no one cares about their process. This is a brand new process we just learned about yesterday. Second of all, the appeals is the process. The process the whole time that the NFLPA agreed to was Roger Goodell gets the final say in the end. Unless there's no suspension in which he can't just like create one whole cloth.

Ultimately, the NFLP kind of decided, hey, in the end, you're the commission. You can do whatever you want. And so we'll see like if Roger Goodell basically wants to use that power. But they don't believe that. That's not where they stand on this. That's why like you were saying they got ahead of it, the union. I think they do know it. And that's why they're publicly positioning themselves in a different way.

Well, my point is that they said, we're not going to, we are not going to appeal this because we both agreed, the NFL agreed, we agreed that Sue Robinson was going to basically figure this out. And then they're going to then, if the NFL does say, we're going to now decree that this needs to be way more harsh than what Sue Robbins, it's going to be war. So they are, that's why that was just a PR thing, because ultimately they are appealing it. And ultimately, they know Goodell would have never changed their appeal to the. the NFL and ultimately they signed all the CBA agreements because they got the money that they wanted

and this was an important thing that the NFL wanted was they yeah they they changed up the disciplinary process to make it look better and to change it up a little but ultimately the NFL was really important that Goodell kept that hammer and the NFLPA essentially traded a percentage of the revenue to let Goodell keep the hammer and here's here's his chance to do what he wants with I guess my point, my overarching point is this. I agree with everything you're saying. But if Roger Goodell and the NFL comes in and ups the suspension, obviously the union then is going to come in and fight that tooth and nail,

whether or not they, what they agree to for the CBA and then the federal courts get involved. So if you're saying right now, and not you, but collectively, don't put too much into six games right now. It could change. If it goes up to a year or indefinite, I guess don't put too much into that either because there's a whole next step to the legal process that we're all going through. We're all, it's a crash course for all of us. And again, none of this is pleasant.

This is not what we want to talk about Monday morning. We're going to have contracts. We're going to have training camps. We're going to have Conner Orr's and slogans, you know. Yeah. So we knew we knew we needed to hit the story. Here it comes to you, the people. And tomorrow we're going to have a full show.

A lot of fun, like Greg said. We're going to hit all the updates to training camp. We're going to have Connor or with Team Sloan. Logan's 2022 and we're going to Rams camp at the end of the week. But Mark, we had to hit it. And that's the way it is, former Browns fan. Former Browns fan. We, you know, there are times when you need an emergency pod.

This was one of those times. We've been tracking this story nonstop. And we are not going to be done tracking this. I think we'll be talking about it again tomorrow, depending on what happens. Sorry. You're probably right. Jeez, you're probably right, Sessler. All right.

Until Tuesday, do what you got to do. and you know what that is. He's the car. Hey everybody, Daniel Jeremiah here. And I'm Bucky Brooks. On Move the Six, we take you inside the game from breaking down college prospects and NFL rookies to evaluating team building philosophies, coaching trends, and how front offices construct winning rosters. We study the tape, talk to decision makers, and give you a perspective you won't find anywhere else.

It's everything you need to understand the why behind what happens on Sunday. Don't miss it. Listen to the Move the Sticks podcast on the. iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcus Grant. And I'm Michael Fulrio, and together we host the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast. Ready to dominate your fantasy league this season? Then you need the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast, your ultimate source for player news,

draft tips, and winning strategies. Whether you're a rookie manager or a fantasy vet. We've got the insight to help you crush your opponents. Listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL, visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. This is an IHeart podcast.