The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Examining the Deshaun Watson trade & allegations with Mike Sando, Jenny Vrentas & Aaron Reiss

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Lindsay Jones and Mike Sando react to the Texans trade sending Deshaun Watson to the Browns. Plus, Lindsay sits down with The Athletic’s Aaron Reiss and New York Times reporter Jenny Vrentas to discuss what’s next for Watson’s legal case and potential discipline from the NFL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Athletic Football Show contains sensitive content and details of alleged sexual misconduct. Listener discretion is advised. This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Lindsay Jones. Today is Friday, March 18th, and there is major breaking news in the NFL. Deshawn Watson is being traded from the Houston Texans to the Cleveland Browns. This has been a stunning move.

It's going to have major reverberations across the NFL. And joining me right now to talk about it is my colleague, Mike Sando. Mike, how are you? Well, I was, Lindsay, I'm doing well. I was just recording my weekly podcast with Randy Mueller when this happened midway through it. So isn't that the NFL now? I mean, all the things that seemed impossible now happen every day. Yeah.

So this has just been kind of a wild afternoon. We've really been waiting for this Deshawn Watson decision for days now, right? ever since it was very clear that Deshaun Watson was going to be traded. We've been waiting to see what his decision was going to be, what the trade compensation was going to be. But what's really wild here is that the Browns were out of it. By many reports, including from our Jeff Howe, Watson in his camp informed the Browns late this week

that they were no longer in the running after they met in person a couple of days ago in Houston. And we thought this was down to the Falcons and the Saints. It seemed like the Falcons were kind of in the in the driver's seat there, had the most likely chance to land Deshaun Watson. And then all of a sudden, this afternoon, Deshaun Watson changed his mind. He decided he was back in on the Browns and he's being traded to Cleveland. So before we get into kind of why we think this happened, some of the dominoes are going to fall, let's just get to the straight news of it. The Browns are giving up three first round picks along with a third round pick and a fourth round pick

and are also going to be giving him a new contract that is reportedly five years for $230 million, all of which is guaranteed. So that is a hefty price to pay, right? I mean, this is a lot of draft capital, and that is certainly a massive contract. This is a record-setting quarterback contract in terms of guaranteed money. This is more than Patrick Mahomes, more than Aaron Rogers, who recently signed his new deal. So in terms of guaranteed money, Deshaun Watson is now going. to be the richest quarterback in the NFL. So this is all like really, really stunning developments.

All of this is happening pretty quick. So Mike, just take us inside. What is your reaction when you saw the Browns? First off, on the money, let's just wait and see what that is because I've never seen a contract's initial reports be underselling a deal. Okay. So we'll see what the deal is in the end. How much is guaranteed? How much is fully guaranteed? What happens if he gets suspended, which, by the way, could happen. I think we're expecting for at least some of the season. He could be suspended the whole season. What strikes me about this deal is the control that a player can have when there's the no-trade clause.

So he was essentially interviewing teams. And that's how you could see Cleveland being out of it. Well, how does Cleveland get back into it? What can they do for Deshaun Watson? Well, they can sweeten the contract end of it, right? and he and his agent seemed to do a very skillful job of having these teams that are so desperate for quarterbacks and are willing to do anything to get a quarterback to work with him on his terms. It also then took, you know, Houston had to go along with this, but as long as Houston knew they were going to have multiple suitors in there, this seemed to, the leverage game seemed to work for both Houston and Watson to a degree that we couldn't necessarily anticipate. And all of this is really complicated and very nuanced. And a little bit later in this show, if you keep on listening, we had a conversation with Jenny Brentis from the New York Times and Aaron Reese, who is our Houston Texans beat writer, about all of the legal implications, how Deshaun Watson and the Texans got to this point where a trade was going to be possible, the criminal investigation, the civil lawsuits, the possibility of an NFL suspension. So we're going to talk a lot more in just a couple of

minutes about all of that because we can't separate the two sides of this. As much as, you know, I think much of the NFL wants to make this strictly a football story right now, there's a lot of layers going on here. And I think that's why when I saw the contract, you know, when you see $230 million guaranteed. And Mike, you've made a very astute observation here that guaranteed versus fully guaranteed are very different because if he is suspended typically for a personal conduct violation, it will void guarantees. But we'll see, we have to see exactly how all of this is going to work out. But that was what kind of, you know, really struck me because as we're going to get into here

in just a little bit in this conversation with Jenny and Aaron, Deshaun Watson is still facing 22 active civil lawsuits where he's facing allegations of various forms of sexual misconduct stemming from massage appointments and his behavior in there. He no longer faces the possibility of criminal charges. You know, teams were able to pursue a trade over the last week or so knowing that he wasn't going to be going to jail. He was not facing jail time or a criminal trial. But his legal issues are far from over unless he's able to race to settle these 22 cases.

And our understanding from speaking with the lawyer who's representing the women in these cases, they're not looking to settle right now. So this stuff is all proceeding. So it is going to be very messy and very complicated. over the next couple weeks. So make sure you keep listening to this conversation with Jenny and Aaron because we get into a lot of the stuff that, you know, it's been a little bit more difficult to talk about, but is very important to consider when we're talking about Deshaun Watson's football future. And it's difficult to do both, right? But let's talk about the Cleveland Browns, right?

And why, Mike, do you think ultimately football-wise this is the place that Deshaun Watson chose to be? And why do you think from a football perspective, the Browns engaged so heavily in these negotiations? Well, from a football standpoint, certainly their roster is way further along than, say, the Falcons roster. You could make comparisons to New Orleans, but they've obviously had the perpetual cap situations. The hard part in trying to predict how this would happen is we didn't know what was important to Deshaun Watson. Is it a football decision? Is it a geographic decision? Is it a money decision?

Is it a combination of those things all coming together? that can I win quickly? Can I even be in the AFC, which he ended up being? So I don't know exactly what it was, but clearly with the contract stuff coming out quickly, that had to be a hugely important part of it because that's what they're putting out there first, right? And that's not coming from the team. That's the money stuff always comes from the player's agent, almost 99% of the time.

So that must have been really important to him to get that. We haven't seen any contrition from him on any of those cases. basically denied everything. So that's a victory lap move, right, to be talking about the money and all of that right away. To me, that must have been really important to him. I think the football part of it is obvious that the Cleveland Browns are a good team and a good roster.

So obviously there's going to be some more dominoes that are going to fall. I mean, the story in Cleveland this week has been, what is Baker Mayfield's future? Obviously, he opened up his notes app on his phone and he posted a long statement the other night. that was basically a goodbye to Cleveland, then formally requested to trade. The Browns said they would not comply with that trade request.

You would have to think that now the Browns are going to be very willing to deal Baker Mayfield. So now that Deshawn Watson has picked his destination where he's going to go, I think that's going to mean that the rest of these dominoes can start falling, whether that's a Baker Mayfield trade, Jimmy Garoppolo, you know, a couple of these other teams, whether that's, you know, the Seahawks or the Saints or the Panthers. a couple of the teams who missed out on Dishon Watson are going to kind of be able to make the moves that they needed to make or wait for the draft to figure out. So what are you watching for next, Mike, in terms of now we know where Dishon Watson is going to go. What's going to be the next, what's going to be, I guess, the ripple effect?

Yeah, to me, Garapolo is on a back burner. He's got an injured shoulder. The 49ers have to figure out what's going on with that before they can probably trade them. Teams aren't going to, I don't think, want to acquire an injured player necessarily. And they can hold on to him and wait to see which team is without a quarterback. I've thought that could be a possibility for them. Mayfield reportedly, I saw our Jeff Hal reported that he's asked to go to the Colts. Well, that could happen.

But remember, the Matt Ryan situation is still fluid. Just because remember, he agreed with the Falcons to delay a bonus until Monday that would allow them to sort of buy some time to determine what to do with Matt Ryan. Well, that means in their mind they were already okay with moving on for Matt Ryan. Does that change now? Are they just going to go happily ever after with Matt Ryan and play three more years with them and do a restructured deal? I don't know. If I'm the Colts, maybe I'd rather have Matt Ryan than Baker Mayfield, right? Baker Mayfield's a loose cannon a little bit with his comments.

He's not a proven performer. He's been hurt. I would be going to push maybe for Matt Ryan if I were them. If Atlanta is still, if I were the Colts, if Atlanta is still, willing to move from him. Certainly, Matt Ryan has to get something out of this, right, out of his agreement to push that thing. There has to be something that comes out good for him. So that is a little bit of a wild card to me in my mind. Is he movable? And because if he, if Matt Ryan lands with the Colts, that's a pretty good deal for him and them and would be

better than getting Baker Mayfield, in my opinion. So now I guess if we want to take just kind of a big picture look at kind of where we're at with this quarterback market, obviously that you just address some of the decisions that have yet to come. The AFC is a gauntlet when it comes to quarterback play. The AFC West, when you go top to bottom with Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Derek Carr, who now has Devonte Adams and now Russell Wilson in Denver. And now you look at the AFC North, who has Deshawn Watson in Cleveland, Joe Burrow in Cincinnati, Lamar Jackson, the guy who somehow has been kind of the forgotten

guy that nobody is talking about lately with the elite quarterbacks in the AFC. and then Mitchell Trebisky, but we'll see what the Steelers do. How does this move change the balance of power in the AFC at all? What sort of statement do you think this is Sunday? Absolutely. So if you look at last year in the AFC and the NFC, it wasn't like the number one seeds went all the way through, right? It was the fourth seed in each side made the Super Bowl. I think there's a bunch of teams.

Look, obviously the Raiders see themselves in this vein too, making the DeBonte Adams trade, signing Chandler-Jones. There's a bunch of teams that are good and dangerous. interest in the AFC, but I don't think they're afraid of each other. I think they all feel like, hey, we have a good team here. We can make the playoffs seven bursts to get into the playoffs, and we'll take our chances because none of these teams, all these teams have a chance, but none of them is a perfect team. They can all be beaten. So I just think there's a bunch of teams that are now in that window, and we can't say that which one is going to emerge. I think they all feel like they're going to have a chance, and they all may be right. So I guess one more kind of

football point on Deshaun Watson before we move into our conversation where we talk about everything else and all of the legal issues and allegations and stuff he's faced is what does Deshaun Watson look like with the Cleveland Browns? What is their offense going to look like? He was not a guy, I think, that you included in your quarterback tiers last year, right, Mike? Because he wasn't playing, right? I mean, he was kind of in his whole. I think he was in there. I think he was, I think he came in as the, in the fifth slot at the bottom of Tier 1. Oh, so you were talking to people about him, but it was kind of under the pretense of we don't know if he's going to play. It was a little bit of a, yeah, we didn't, we didn't know exactly what was going on because I start that way in the spring, you know, in the spring.

So I did have him in there. He came in fifth. He got 26 votes in Tier 1, 23 in Tier 2, and 1 in Tier 3. So that put him actually won. spot above of even Josh Allen, which I'm sure Josh Allen probably might go past him, but he's still going to be seen in that upper echelon of quarterbacks. So let's assume that he is able to play this year, whether that means Roger Goodell has not issued a suspension or the investigation remains open and they have yet to make a decision. So, you know, let's just proceed right now as if Deshaun

Watson is the starting quarterback of the Browns in week one, which, to be clear, there is nothing preventing that right now. He's not on any sort of, you know, suspension list, commissioners exemptless, nothing. There is literally nothing in place from keeping this trade from happening and Dachan Watson from being on the field with the with the Browns when they start OTAs next month. That all can happen right now. So let's just assume that he is playing this year. Let's say he plays 17 games. What does the Browns offense look like with Dishon Watson? What are they able to do now that they were not able to do when they had Baker Mayfield as their quarterback? Yeah, I think he's, you know, probably a more powerful thrower of the football and certainly a bigger, stronger athlete in there. Baker's undersized. I think he has

greater credibility as a player. Obviously, the other issues with his credibility, we're not talking about that, but as a player, for sure, he's seen in that upper echelon. So I think a team can respond to that when you know you've got a chance, a guy who gives you a chance to win. I don't know about they're a structured offense. I didn't feel like Baker Mayfield was a great fit for the system there. Baker Mayfield's good in a shotgun, go fast, kind of act before you think offense, right? Just a feel offense. And I feel like they have a really structured, heck, they were happy to play with Case Keenham, play action, all of that. So I don't know that they're going to totally change that structure for Deshaun Watson.

I think that's an interesting component of this. It should give him some of the cover that he didn't have in Houston. I felt like times in Houston, Deshaun Watson had it all on his back. and there was, you know, he was under siege. So it should be a little bit of an easier offense for him, especially if their defense is competitive. He didn't have a good defense there in Houston either. So I think the game should be easier for Deshawn Watson.

And then, you know, probably some more spectacular plays than Baker-Mayfield is able to produce. So, Mike, before I let you go and we get into our conversation with Jenny Brentes and Aaron Reese, what questions do you have out there right now? And maybe what do you want to see and hear from Deshaun Watson in coming days and weeks as he makes his start with the Browns? Well, I want to see what his and the team's attitude is towards these cases and allegations that are against him. I don't know what happened, but it seems to me that at some point there would be an acknowledgement of something that I could have handled something better.

It just seems very defiant to me to this point. And that's really, I think, what we're all, we haven't really seen him much. He had the one appearance after this. How does this all look? I thought it was going to be hard for a general manager to sit there at a podium in a press conference next to him and say, this is our guy, based on the allegations. I understand the criminal part's not coming to four. But that doesn't mean that there's not a bunch of really damaging,

allegations out there that people have made. You don't have to have the ability to prove it in a court of law to have these questions hanging over somebody. So how do you do that? What does that look like? Do people just move on and start ranking them in their fantasy quarterback, you know, rankings next week? Is that what happens? Or are people going to be asking them tough questions? Now, training camp, week one, right? All of that stuff. I think that how this all can be handled now that you're actually going to have to stand there and say this is our quarterback is very interesting to me. Yeah, I think so. And I fully expect that the Media Corps in Cleveland will be up to that challenge for asking those hard questions. I'm very curious how the Browns as an

organization go ahead and handle that. But Mike, thank you so much for joining me here on short notice. I know you've been podcasting all day because the news in the NFL never sleeps. I mean, this has been just a wild, wild week or so. And there are more dominoes that seem like they're going to be falling. For now, I invite you to listen to our conversation with Jenny Brentis from the New York Times and Aaron Reese, our Houston Texans beat writer about how the Texans, Deshawn Watson, and the Browns got to this point and what is coming next for Deshawn Watson in his legal situation. Hi, this is Lindsay Jones from The Athletic. And I'm really excited to be joined today by Aaron Reese, our Houston Texans beat writer and Jenny Brentas, a.

NFL and sports investigative reporter at the New York Times and previously of Sports Illustrated because we want to talk about Deshawn Watson because this has never been strictly a football story. And even though, you know, the trade speculation and the trade moves have been kind of the dominating storyline this week about Deshawn Watson, this has never been strictly a football story and there's a lot of layers to this. There's a lot of nuance. So we want to talk about kind of all of that and what is probably next for Watson and his new team. So Aaron and Jenny, Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, happy to be here, Lindsay.

Yeah, same. All right. So, Aaron, I want to start with you. So you have been covering the Texans for several years now. And I want to go back to the 2020 season and maybe early 2021. How did Watson and the Texans kind of get to this point where their football relationship was really heading for divorce? Yeah, I think the starting point is when they traded DeAndre Hopkins, you know,

that was someone who Deshaun Watson obviously was close with. both went to Clemson at different times. He was, you know, one of the best or is one of the best receivers in the NFL. And he found out that he was being traded, you know, just online like everyone else. And so that, that seems to be kind of where the first fracturing of things started. And, you know, from there, I think, you know, they progress. Obviously, that trade does not go very well. They have a really bad 2020 season.

Deshaun had already, by that point, signed, you know, a contract extension with the Texans anyway. But it was, it was a short-term extension. and what has been key here, obviously, is that he got into trade clause in that extension that has given him some power over where he goes next. And so after that 2020 season, you know, they're looking to hire someone to replace Bill O'Brien as general manager and also hire a new head coach.

And, you know, Deshaun was under the impression. He'd be have a little more of a say or at least be more in touch with Cowell McNair in the process of hiring a general manager. And he turns out he was not. And he tweeted, I forgot the exact tweet after, but, you know, sent out some sort of cryptic tweet after they hired Nick Asario, something about being more of the same with another Patriots person.

And as Jenny has reported at Sports Illustrated before, too, that, you know, Jack Easterby, an executive of the Texans, was involved in getting Nick Serio from New England to Houston. And Deshaun did not have a great relationship with Easterby. It wasn't really that hard to kind of read between the lines of some of his comments at the end of the 2020 season. So they needed like a whole culture change. And Jack Easterby is the one overseas. the culture of the organization. So it kind of was, it's been a bunch of things,

but I would say it started with the Hopkins trade and progressed through a miserable 2020 season and then just feeling like kind of they were continuing down this Patriots path, continuing on this path of Jackie should be having a lot of influence in the team. All of it kind of made Deshaun is not a faith in the Texans, not a faith in Cal McNair as kind of the owner and leader of the franchise. So in the last offseason started early March of 2021, I mean, Deshaun Watson trade speculation was kind of

one of the defining stories, right? Is he going to get traded? Where is he going to go? Will the Texans give in to these demands? And then everything changed in the middle of March. I believe it was March 16th, right, of 2021 when the first civil complaint alleging sexual misconduct was filed. Jenny, can you take us back to kind of that moment when a first woman came forward in a civil court to accuse Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct? What was contained in that initial lawsuit? And then what happened after that with more women coming forward with similar allegations? Yeah. So the first civil complaint was filed by Ashley Solis, who's a 28-year-old licensed massage therapist

in the Houston area. And in her complaint, she said that she had a March 2020 appointment with Deshawn Watson at her in-home studio. And in that appointment, he did behaviors that were irregular, including bringing his own small towel to cover himself, which is different from. the, you know, sheet covering that's usually used, a large sheet covering and massage appointments. And she said during the course of that appointment, he made her uncomfortable in several different ways up to and including exposing himself and touching her hand with his exposed and

erect penis purposely is how she described it. And Watson has denied all wrongdoing. and sort of we saw that these lawsuits, we saw an exchange about them on social media right before they were even available in the public filings. But after Solis's lawsuit, there was a barrage of others. And right now there's 22 active civil lawsuits. And they all allege similar behaviors in massage appointments, saying that Watson exposed himself, touched his genitals to therapist's hands,

in some cases ejaculated, and in a handful of cases sexually assaulted the therapist. So there was all of a sudden, all of these women were coming forward at the same time and then started by Ashley Solisci's civil complaint. And then some of them also went to the police starting in April. So there ended up being 22 civil suits and 10 criminal complaints. Of the 10 criminal complaints, eight had filed lawsuits and two had not. And in the course of your reporting, I believe while you're still at Sports Illustrated, you also came across another massage therapist who was not part of either the criminal complaints or the civil suits who said she had experienced something similar with Deshaun Watson.

I'm curious if you could just take us briefly inside kind of, I guess some of your reporting and what you learned is you were trying to corroborate the allegations that were made within these lawsuits. Yeah, absolutely. So the civil lawsuits were, of course, public records. So those accounts were out in the public. But we wanted to sort of try to understand a lot of things better. What is the dynamic in a massage room between a powerful client and a massage therapist? How far did this spread? Were people aware of some of these behaviors?

Things like that. So we began reaching out to massage therapists in the Houston area, not knowing what they would say. One of those that we found was a woman who we referred to by the student of Mary. And she gave a similar account. She said in November 2019, she had a massage appointment. with Watson and he exposed himself or moved the towel covering himself during the session. She said he invited her to touch and move his penis, which she declined to do. She also said that he began thrusting his hips on the table and that she noticed a sticky

substance that she later realized was pre-jaculate on his stomach. Her account, I think, was notable because she wasn't a plaintiff. She wasn't suing him. She wasn't working with Tony Busby the same as attorney that all of the plaintiffs were working with. Hers was kind of a totally independent account. And more importantly, we were able to corroborate her account through some messages that had been exchanged at the time. So he had tried to book another appointment with her later on. And she told him in those messages that he'd made her uncomfortable and I only do massage.

She also had exchanged messages after the appointment with another therapist in the Houston area, who had set up the appointment. And when Mary described some of the behaviors, the veteran therapist said to her that this wasn't surprising. Only one person hasn't complained, whether the creepy stuff is his intention or not. He does it every time. We also spoke to a relative of hers that she called immediately following the appointment. So I think her account was really strong because it had some of the corroboration that often doesn't exist in sexual violence cases. And I think we see that that is why sometimes in the criminal justice system, it's hard to move forward with sexual cases because a lot of times there isn't the evidence that we often seek out, photo, video, those kinds of things that are generally, you know, sought by courts of law. But her account provided some of that corroboration.

So these cases are proceeding within the civil court. The criminal investigations begin in Houston. Meanwhile, Deshawn Watson is under contract by the Texans. They have a new head coach, a new general manager in place. You know, he is under contract and is expected to show up. Aaron, how did Watson and the Texans handle everything last year? Yeah, you know, I would say it was weird through like the start of the actual season, through training camp.

And then he kind of faded to the background in an odd way. I mean, so he showed up to training camp, obviously, to avoid fines and they had him participate to some degree. He didn't, you know, wasn't part of any contact drill, no team drills. People kind of made a joke out of the fact that, you know, he was spending like half the practice as a stand in safety, you know, just kind of during some work.

And because they didn't want to get him hurt, obviously is still this trade asset for them, but he was showing up to practice and they were making them kind of submit to do something. But once the season started, he didn't practice with the team. He didn't work out with the team. only time reporters really saw him around the facility is if there's a bridge over a busy street next to the stadium and reporters out to walk across it to, uh, from the parking lot to go get their

COVID test and we'd pass to Sean sometimes after he just worked out. But otherwise, he really wasn't around and David Cully, the coach of the Texans for last season, already been fired, of course. But, you know, he basically, uh, I think he wasn't the best at answering some of these questions, but it kind of just act as though he'd never thought about Deshaun and he wasn't even a consideration for him. And I think there probably is some truth, the fact that the players on a week to week basis aren't really thinking a lot about who is this, what's this guy doing or what's going all of them. You know, I'd think about the fact that a significant portion of the roster was not teammates with him. I mean, this team has really turned over a lot of the roster last season and is

doing so again, to some degree this soft season. So I don't know how much it really mattered. We weren't in the locker, obviously, as reporters. I don't know how much it distracted the team overall. I think there obviously are some. guys who were teammates with him, we would probably wish maybe he was playing with them or something like that. But, you know, it's been kind of in the background for a while. And it's, you know, it's like it only kind of came up, bubbled to the surface when you're near the trade deadline. And I thought maybe they trade him to the dolphins. And then again, now, obviously, where I, you know, he isn't going to have any criminal charges against him. And that's kind of led to all the focus being back

on what could they get for him in a trade and those sorts of things. Until that has, he's been traded. I mean, the team has basically been in somewhat of a kind of a stalling pattern. You know, I mean, they can't really proceed with their rebuild while he is staying on the cap sheet as this huge number. And they want to obviously get all these picks for him. They can kind of really accelerate things. So I think everyone from fans, players, guys who work in the executive offices of the team, they're all kind of waiting for, you know, a divorce here and for everyone to kind of get to move on. And I always kind of looked at it, like the Texans almost did the NFL. and Roger Goodell kind of a favor last season because they, in essence, put him on a paid suspension

or he put himself on a paid suspension by, you know, he didn't want to play for the Texans. It was kind of a convenient thing that the Texans decided they were okay with paying him to be inactive as their third quarterback. He didn't dress for games. He didn't come to the stadium. He didn't travel for road games. But he collected his full salary. And that allowed, I think, Roger Goodell to kind of have a pass of, you know, pushing disciplinary decisions off

further into the future. I was really curious what would have happened had they actually executed the trade with the Dolphins because a team wouldn't have traded for him at midseason for him to sit. Nobody else was going to pay him to not be active. So I was really curious if had that it happened, if Roger Goodell would have been forced to make some sort of decision to put him on the commissioner's exempt list. But that never happened. The NFL has relied very heavily on the precedent that they've never placed a player on this commissioner's exemplist, which is in essence a paid suspension, while there have strictly been an investigation ongoing or accusations that are in civil court as opposed to criminal court. The personal conduct policy lays out the ways that the NFL could use that

paid suspension. And it's for a player who's facing felony charges or is accused of a crime of violence and they in the NFL wants more time to conduct their own investigation. And if that investigation has given them reason to believe that a violation of the policy could have occurred. So that has never happened. He never wound up on the commissioner's exempt list. The NFL's investigation is open and active. And we'll get into a little bit more of that here in a few minutes. But I want to fast forward to kind of what happened over the last few weeks with the grand jury's decision in Houston. Jenny, I know you've covered this extensively from your understanding what was the case that prosecutors, the district attorney in Houston brought to this grand jury? What were the charges that

they were able to consider? And then ultimately, what was decision that that grand jury reached? Yeah. So the grand jury proceedings are, of course, private. So we don't have a ton of visibility into the process. You know, I was standing there with other reporters outside of the grand jury room on Friday. There was clearly a separate entrance for which the grand jurors and also the women who were subpoenaed to appear had gone through because we didn't even see anybody going in and out. So because the proceedings were secret, the prosecutor who presented the case who works in the Harris County District Attorney's Office, John Estallings, who oversees the sex crimes and trafficking unit. She came out after the jury hearings were over, the grand jury hearings were over, and said that the grand jury had met for about six hours hearing evidence in nine of the 10 criminal complaints against Watson and that the grand jury returned nine no bills, which means they declined to indict on nine of the accounts. she didn't specify which charges were being considered.

The Houston police investigation seemed to be narrowing in on indecent assault, which in Texas is a misdemeanor. There is a distinction between that and sexual assault, which is non-consensual penetration. But three of the criminal complaints did allege sexual assaults, so it's possible that that was also one of the counts that the grand jury was considering. But the prosecutor said this concludes the criminal investigation in Harris County. And so from that point forward, it seemed as though teams saw that as a green light to move forward with trade discussions.

You know, I think the grand jury decision means that the standard they're looking for is, is there probable cause to bring criminal charges based on the evidence that was presented. We don't exactly know how the prosecutor presented the case either. We do know that several of the women who filed criminal complaints were subpoenaed to be there. They were all sitting together in a room ready to go in and provide testimony if either the prosecutor called them in or if the grand jury requested to hear from them. We know that only one of those women was called into the grand jury room. The grand jury also heard video testimony that the women had given to criminal police. investigators throughout the process. So you mentioned that this seems to have given NFL teams the

green light to go ahead and pursue a trade. And that absolutely is what the discussion has been, really ever since the Friday when that grand jury testimony came out. And I don't, you know, from what I understand, my reporting on this is that nothing is going to change from the NFL's standpoint right here. I mean, there is nothing that is preventing a trade. There is nothing at this point that is preventing Deshawn Watson from being a starting quarterback in early September of 2022. The NFL's investigation, though, does remain open. And one of the things that we've been hearing a lot about since the grand jury decision was reached is how these teams that have been pursuing DeShon Watson, whether that's the New Orleans Saints, the Atlanta Falcons, the Carolina Panthers, the Cleveland Browns were kind of the four main suitors here,

was that they were doing their own homework into him, right? You hear this all the time. We're doing our due diligence. We're looking into him. And I'm always curious what exactly does that mean? I called around to, you know, those teams over the last week or so. And a lot of what I heard was that they were speaking to Sean Watson, obviously all four of those teams had face-to-face meetings with him. They were speaking to Rusty Hardin, who is his attorney. And they were trying to gather information from the law enforcement investigation, trying to get any information that they could from witness statements or from what was presented to the grand jury, what, you know, what the Houston police found. in that process. What they have not done from our understanding is spoken to the women directly or to their attorney, Tony Busby. Aaron Reese, I know you spoke to Tony Busby a couple of days ago shortly after the grand jury decision was reached, shortly after Deshaun Watson was deposed in a couple

of these civil cases. What was your sense from him about kind of what's coming next and where this, you know, what sort of information the NFL or NFL teams are trying to gather from him or his clients? Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, he said that he hasn't spoken to any teams that are considering trading for Deshaun. And he said he had heard from the NFL in months about, you know, more of more of his clients speaking to investigators. You know, he was kind of resigned to that he never really expected the NFL would necessarily take this super seriously or that the investigation would be super thorough. So I think at the sense he was necessarily calling for the NFL to do something so much as just kind of lamenting that this is the way things. and that, you know, he's not surprised that people are kind of just shifting the conversation back to, back to football. But, you know, that this, he intends for this to continue to be something that he's going to press on with and intends at least as it right now to go to trial with.

You know, obviously, as Rusty Harden has acknowledged, Deshaun tried to settle a lot of these suits before getting traded to the dolphins at the trade deadline. And it didn't, it didn't all work out for one reason or another. But as of right now, there's no indication that kind of the other teams that are involved in these trade. discussions are making a contingency that he has to settle these cases. So as long as these civil suits are active, I mean, you know, there's going to be a pre-trial conference in May that would schedule when, you know, further trials for each of these would be. And, you know, this could drag on for quite a while. Yeah. So he is still facing 22 active civil cases. He's been deposed in four of those. So he should have to sit for 18 more depositions, if I'm doing my math correctly. I believe in the first

first two of those depositions, they occurred the same day as the grand jury was deliberating, and he pled the fifth during those two. He had two depositions on Tuesday, so after the grand jury's decision came out and actually answered questions during that. So, you know, Jenny, you've covered these sorts of cases for a long time. You've covered the NFL for a really long time. What's your sense of kind of what's going to happen next? And maybe what questions do you think NFL team should be preparing for or his new team should be answering as they look into acquiring Deshaun Watson now. Yeah. I think the way that the acquisition is taking place because it's a trade and he has a no trade clause and he has to waive his no trade clause, it's become this kind of

recruitment process. So that certainly raises the question of what questions are teams asking Watson and are they actually pressing him on some of the facts that have been a lot of. alleged or some of the accounts that have been out there, right? Are they seeking to get those answers in these meetings or are the meetings more so trying to court him and convince him to waive his no trade clause for the team that he goes to? We certainly know that the NFL can impose a suspension even without there being criminal charges. There's several cases in recent years in which that has happened. And so I think that's very possible here. Of course, the union will seek to defend his employment rights.

But the truth of the matter is he was eligible to play all last season and he did earn his full salary. So this notion of time served that's being put out there, it's not quite the same thing because, you know, he didn't, he wasn't on, you know, any kind of unpaid leave or he wasn't suspended in any way last season. You know, I think the NFL purports to hold itself to a higher standard. That's why it has the personal conduct policy in place, and that personal conduct policy covers a wide range of behaviors, even if they don't rise to the level of criminal charges. And so I think looking at this case, the grand jury made a decision not to bring criminal charges in Harris County.

But I think if you look at the facts that are out there, the accounts that are out there, some of the corroborating information, certainly that does point to there being some form of. of misconduct potentially committed here. And so I think all of that information is important to consider, not just a single part of the process, right? Not just a single decision by the grand jury. You know, I think everything should be considered in full. And I think that teams should, if they're seeking to bring him in, they should take a look at all of those facts that are out there and seek to address those with him.

Yeah. One thing when I was making calls to, these teams over the last week or so, teams that were interested in acquiring Deshaun Watson is, I feel like I always tried to shift the conversation away from just the football side of it, right? Because I think everybody wants to talk about like his football fit and how will he, you know, mesh with the coaching staff and what, what's the roster like around him. But I think it's just a lot more layered than that, you know, because I think it's going to be really complicated to, not necessarily to sell Deshaun Watson to a locker room because I think his tape speaks for

himself, right? But I think it's going to be really complicated with how this is handled with his new team within their organization, their female employees, to the fan base. And it's not just because he was accused of sexual misconduct, right? I mean, I think we've seen cases like this, a lot of places. But this is what he's been accused of is kind of somewhat related to football, right? And this is treatment and this is stuff, you know, massage therapist. And yes, it was massage therapies that he was arranging on his own. But, you know, a lot of teams now have female trainers. They bring in massage therapist to their building. I'm very curious to know what sort of plan is going to be in place from the new team about, you know, from a public relations standpoint, how do you address this? How do you, do you make him answer, go hold of big press conference? Are you trying to run from it? Are you trying to hide from it? That's why the fact that the Falcons and the Panthers were two of the interested teams. I mean, these are places where he's very comfortable. He grew up 10 miles away from flowery branch. Obviously, Carolina, you know, Clemson is not that far away from.

the panthers headcord is actually right it's very close to where they do they hold their training camp their their training camp excuse me in spartanburg so i'm just really going to be curious how this all plays out because at this point it's he's going to be playing in 2022 barring an NFL suspension which could come at some point i think that's certainly still possible but i think you know those of us who work in NFL media kind of have to prepare ourselves for how we'll cover the story how we talk about the story I think a lot of our colleagues are probably very ill-equipped to talk about this story. But that's why I really appreciate your reporting, Jenny and Aaron as well, that you've, you know, I think you've done a really good job of not making it strictly a football story

because it's not. And as much as people want to make it a football story, this is going to be something that we're going to have to consider when we're talking about Deshawn Watson playing in September and and beyond. Thanks, Lindsay. Thanks for listening. We'll have more coverage of this story on the athletic, the athletic app, and on the athletic football show. This was the athletic football show.