Deshaun Watson’s season is over, and maybe his entire NFL career. The Cleveland Browns quarterback was in the midst of one of the worst statistical seasons the league has ever seen, with Browns fans booing him when he took the field Sunday. Then, suddenly, in the second quarter of a Week 7 matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals, Watson dropped back for a pass and then crumpled to the ground with a ruptured Achilles. The reactions to the injury were stark. The Cleveland crowd showed they were fed up with Watson’s uselessness even more so than his off-the-field transgressions. Meanwhile, Watson’s peers and teammates defended him and lifted him up. Both types of reactions are reminders of the type of environment that allowed someone who has been accused of dozens of acts of sexual misconduct to still be accepted and defended even as so many others are repulsed by those alleged acts.
The unwritten rule in sports is that fans pay respect to players when they’re injured. Even if you’re rooting for the opposing team, it’s bad form to cheer when a player is hurt. It’s especially bad form to celebrate when a player on the team you’re cheering for is injured. The Cleveland crowd ignored that unwritten rule when fans loudly celebrated at the sight of Watson falling to the ground because of a devastating injury. In a vacuum, the raucous joy at Watson’s misery would have been universally panned, but Watson’s unique circumstances have complicated everything.
The contract the Cleveland Browns gave Watson, a record-setting $230 million over five years, locked the team in with the quarterback for almost all of the agreement. They can’t trade Watson or even cut him without major financial implications. The contract was already unpopular as the bid for Watson came as he was faced with more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct. The contract also paid Watson enough money to allow him to settle every allegation out of court, making it virtually impossible for him to face any legal ramifications for any wrongdoing. In short, it was a morally void decision by the Browns.
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But that wasn’t Watson’s biggest sin in the eyes of many fans who were still attending games, cheering on the team, buying jerseys and supporting the franchise that had gone out of its way to make an accused sexual assaulter the face of its franchise. To those fans, Watson’s biggest sin was that he was bad at football — he will end the season as the worst quarterback in the league. He was leading the worst offense the Browns had seen this century. And coupled with a coach who refused to bench him, Watson’s tenure with the Browns has been a nightmare. That’s why the boos rained down on him as soon as Watson took the field. Yes, there was obviously a large swath of fans who were opposed to him and voiced their opinions about it. But there were enough people still willing to fill up stadiums every week hoping that Watson could deliver a Super Bowl win. Enough people whose boos filled the arena Sunday in a way that didn’t in the weeks and months before Watson’s on-the-field decline. The deafening boos on Sunday were reminders of the boos that were absent before. If fans were so opposed to Watson, those jeers would have resounded from the moment he took the field in a Browns uniform and never stopped.
And this isn’t to single out Cleveland fans. I live in Atlanta near a Falcons team that was also willing to bend over backward for Watson. I don’t have any doubt that the stadium here would be just as full with Watson playing. I haven’t been given any reason to believe that society as a whole is willing to put the well-being of women above our own selfish wants, even if those wants are as shallow as wanting a team we love to win a championship.
But the fans in Cleveland did boo on Sunday. And they cheered loudly when they realized the franchise would be without Watson all season. The cheering drew the ire of Watson’s peers, namely Browns quarterback Jameis Winston and defensive end Myles Garrett, who spoke out about how disappointed they were in fans for cheering Watson’s injury.
Winston’s impassioned pleas included comments such as “I’m grateful to have the chance to serve Deshaun.”
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“I am very upset with the reaction to a man that has had the world against him for the past four years,” Winston said. “And he put his body and life on the line for this city every single day.”
Garrett offered this: “Man does pretty much everything right. A model citizen through college and also the pros. Plays the game as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen … We have to be there for him as a team and as an organization. We can’t look down on a guy because of any mistakes on the field or anything off the field. We don’t have any moral high ground to look down on the guy.”
The comments were at best disappointing but, more accurately, insulting to anyone who experienced or survived a sexual assault of any kind, especially from Watson himself. Watson has had “the world against him,” as Winston said, mainly because of justified anger over someone accused of doing the things Watson has been alleged. And someone with “the world against him” doesn’t have $230 million in guaranteed money to rest on. Garrett calling Watson a model citizen is a slap in the face. I’ve asked in the past why Watson’s teammates were so quiet about sharing a locker room with someone accused of sexual misconduct. In a league that excommunicates players they don’t like all the time (ask Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson, for example), why hasn’t that happened in Cleveland yet? Sadly, Winston and Garrett gave us a glimpse into a locker room that seemed to simply not find Watson’s alleged crimes egregious enough to speak out against. Players such as Winston and Garrett could argue that going against their quarterback would be unpopular, but defending someone with Watson’s history shouldn’t be as unpopular.
Maybe the most disappointing reaction of the night came from Ohio’s own LeBron James. He tweeted his disappointment about fans booing Watson: “Cleveland Fans! Yall know how much we’ve been thru throughout the years both good, bad and indifferent. With that being said booing anyone that’s down with an injury let alone your own player is LAME AF,” he wrote.
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James isn’t new in his support of Watson. He sent out a celebratory tweet when Watson joined the Browns in 2022. It’s sadly ironic to go to James’ timeline on X, formerly known as Twitter, and see that his last two tweets are about the WNBA Finals, followed by a tweet of support for a man who’s accused of abusing women.
The James tweet. The support from Watson’s teammates. The boos that became louder for Watson after he played poorly were ways people like Watson were allowed to flourish in the face of terrible accusations. Every celebration, ticket punched and jersey bought while Watson was a Brown was a statement that not even what he was accused of was enough to demand a team do better. Every one of those means of endorsing the team is at least passive support for a terrible decision. And that’s not even counting the fans who fully supported Watson despite — or because of — what he was accused of doing.
Watson’s career may be over. And all that’s left is the need for a lot of people to look in a lot of mirrors and wonder how we allowed his career to get this far at all.
David Dennis Jr. is a senior writer at Andscape, and the author of the award-winning book “The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride.” David is a graduate of Davidson College.
