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• #DESEAN WHATSON SERIES#

Watson did not serve an 11-game suspension just because the league felt like suspending him: The NFL had to present its case to retired judge Sue L. On August 12, before his preseason debut, he issued a brief apology “to all of the women that I have impacted in this situation.” Six days later, he told reporters that “I’ve always stood on my innocence and never assaulted anyone or disrespected anyone.” On Thursday, Watson spoke to the press again, but only agreed to answer football questions-when asked “what he learned about himself” during his time away from the game and through league-mandated counseling, he said “that’s more in that phase of clinical and legal stuff” and refused to elaborate.īut the NFL believes that Watson committed sexual assault, and a former judge agreed. The Browns have insisted that Watson is “remorseful,” but the quarterback has maintained he’s done nothing wrong in each of his limited media appearances since joining the team. Watson has settled 23 of the 26 civil suits (one case was dropped), although this proves neither guilt nor innocence. Two Texas grand juries declined to indict Watson on criminal charges, which means they felt there wasn’t enough evidence to go to trial. Some of the women said that Watson pressured them to commit sex acts others said Watson touched them with his penis and ejaculated on them. They said that he turned massage appointments into unwanted sexual encounters.

#DESEAN WHATSON SERIES#

Since March 2021, 26 women have said roughly the same thing about Watson through a series of civil lawsuits. “You think you put us behind you,” Buzbee said, “but we are still here.” Some of them will be at the game: Lawyer Tony Buzbee, who has represented most of the women who filed cases against Watson, has rented a suite at NRG Stadium and told The Athletic he expects about 10 of the women will go to the game. There could be 70,000 fans in attendance on Sunday, when Watson plays against the Texans, his former team, in Houston-the city where many of the women who sued him for sexual misconduct and/or sexual assault live. But when he played in his only preseason game for the Browns in August, fans in Jacksonville heckled him, chanting, “You sick fuck!” and, “No means no!” That was a few hundred people in a mostly empty stadium for an exhibition game. Watson has remained mainly hidden for the last two years. If anything, it will grow louder than ever. The Browns hope that when Watson puts on his pads and cleats, the talk about the ugliness of his actions will suddenly disappear. When Deshaun Watson makes his return to an NFL field on Sunday, the Cleveland Browns must hope that it will start the transition from people talking about “Deshaun Watson, the man named in more than two dozen accounts of sexual misconduct” to “Deshaun Watson, the quarterback.” They hope that it will shift the focus away from the franchise’s decision to go all in on somebody who a disciplinary officer found caused “genuine danger to the safety and well-being” of multiple women and to the team’s late-season playoff push.