Watson to Cleveland and Free Agency Review, Part II | The MMQB NFL Podcast

Browns take in Deshaun Watson while facing serious allegations, Davante Adams to the Raiders, Packers setbacks and more

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Conor and Gary start things off with a discussion of the Browns, from their stunning decision to pursue Deshaun Watson while the quarterback is under the cloud of 22 civil lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct, to their stunning decision to award him an unprecedented contract, to their off-putting decision to build the contract around a likely suspension.

Then, the Davante Adams trade to the Raiders, what sense it could make for Vegas, and why it’s an even more significant setback for the Packers than you might realize.

Plus, whether Allen Robinson to L.A. signals another evolution for Sean McVay’s Rams offense, Robert Woods’s fit in Tennessee, what’s next for the Bengals after adding La’el Collins, and what might be the weirdest halftime show in Super Bowl history.

And again, here is the Deshaun Watson piece from May that will give you a much more complete understanding of what’s going on in Houston.

Have a comment, critique or question for a future mailbag? Email themmqb@gmail.com or tweet at @GGramling_SI or @ConorOrr.

The following is an automatically generated transcript from The MMQB NFL Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

Gary Gramling: So we are starting obviously with Deshaun Watson and the football side of the saga comes to a close. He is traded to the Cleveland Browns despite continuing to face allegations for 22 different women in civil lawsuits. It was jarring because the Browns were declared to be out of the running and then got themselves back into the running, but also just jarring from a bigger picture standpoint, that this ended at the time when this whole situation, with allegations of sexual misconduct, has not yet been resolved.

Conor Orr: And here’s a funny thing about this. So the Browns issued statements from the Haslams, from Andrew Berry (the GM) and from Kevin Stefanski. And in true Denzel Washington Training Day style, they make everybody put their name on that statement so that they are all complicit in what they know is a complete horses--- maneuver. They were talking about the due diligence, but how could there be due diligence if none of the teams had reached out to any of the women in the lawsuit? And how could it be due diligence if there’s still an active investigation going on here? A grand jury declining to indict is not an exoneration. And yes, we the media who have to cover courts—and I feel like, even dating back to my days at The Star-Ledger I covered a court case at least once a year—maybe we know that and the general public doesn’t know that, and we’re not doing a good enough job explaining it. Or maybe the general public doesn’t want to hear it, and the Browns don’t wanna hear it and they assume that nobody’s gonna give a s---. So I think it’s really interesting that they made everybody put their names on that. And I thought it was interesting that Kevin Stefanski said, the due diligence work that Andrew did, not me, not anybody on my staff, but the people upstairs who are pushing the buttons and pulling the levers. So I thought all of that was interesting and largely thought the trade was just complete disgusting horses---.

Gary Gramling: And look, as the coming months and perhaps years go on, I think we will find out more about what the Browns indeed did as far as their due diligence goes. I think as soon as this week, you might see some stuff leaking out about some of the approaches that they took. I will again, point people back to our coverage that Jenny Vrentas and I—and Greg Bishop pitched in too—did, this was back last May. And I know a lot of people say, Oh, that was a year ago, things have changed now. No. 1, everything in that story was completely predictive of what happened with the criminal charges falling apart, as opposed to the civil lawsuits, because that is how the criminal justice system is built. It was not built to really do anything significant with a series of allegations like this. No. 2, we discovered corroborating evidence for Ashley Solis’s account. This was all discovered independent of the lawyers—every other, quote-unquote investigative reporter out there has mostly just gone to the two lawyers and said, tell me something so I can tweet it out and say I investigated—but we went around the lawyers entirely for that story, to find this information. You had a massage therapist who continues to be in Deshaun Watson’s camp, has been working with his side of it throughout. She had shared some text messages with us that she immediately regretted sharing that showed her concerns over Deshaun’s behaviors, told a woman who is not among the plaintiffs—who gave us her account of her massage therapy session with Watson, which was incredibly problematic. And the text exchange with this woman who again, has been advocating for Deshaun Watson, the quote was, “Everyone but one massage therapist has complained about him,” his behavior. There’s a conversation to be had about what level this rises to under Texas statutes. They are certainly more lenient when it comes to sexual violence than a lot of other states. For that reason, it was even less likely Deshaun Watson would ever be charged for any of this in the state of Texas. That’s just the way it’s built down there. And that’s why the fact that these civil lawsuits still are going forward is significant. Jenny Vrentas, who by the way is going to be on SI Weekly this week and we are going to have her on the show a week from today, on the next Monday show. All I can say is, there are 22 women who have filed lawsuits. We found corroborating evidence for one of them, we have another woman who is not suing—who has no reason to come out and lie about this. And by the way, we found her completely separate from anyone involved in these cases. And she wanted to speak out as sort of a public witness as far as these cases go. That’s what we have here. For him to continue to insist that the truth has come out because he wasn’t indicted ... well, you weren’t gonna be indicted. It was incredibly unlikely, no matter what the evidence showed. And on top of that, to say, “there was no wrongdoing, I didn’t do anything wrong.” That’s a statement that’s been coming out through his lawyer throughout this entire situation here. And boy, it is just incredibly hard to believe that could possibly be true at this point.

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