Scenes From Deshaun Watson’s Long Day in Houston

The Texans owner’s wife turned her back on him. The stands were half-empty. And his play? Shaky. What Watson’s first game back was like for those in attendance.

Deshaun Watson came out of the tunnel at NRG Stadium in Houston—in uniform for a regular-season game for the first time in 700 days—and stopped near the corner of the end zone. He looked down at the navy paint at his feet, cracked his neck, made the sign of the cross, looked up and pointed to the sky, pounded his chest twice and jogged up the Browns’ sideline.

By then the boos were raining down—before a smattering of cheers, coming from the few in the stands, evened the sound out. It was a little less than an hour before kickoff.

Watson continued up the field toward center Hjalte Froholdt, slapping hands with his teammate. As he set up to take a snap, he spotted the owners of the two teams 10 yards away. So he veered over to give his old boss, Houston’s Cal McNair, a handshake and half hug, while nodding and acknowledging his current boss, Cleveland’s Jimmy Haslam, and retreating back to Froholdt to warm up.

But what was most notable, and maybe symbolic of this weird Sunday, was what happened just to Haslam’s left. There stood McNair’s wife, Hannah. She was wearing purple shoes, as part of the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats campaign, emblazoned with the logos of the Houston Area Women’s Center, a facility serving local victims of sexual and domestic violence. She also wore a purple dress, as a sign of solidarity with those women.

As Watson approached her husband, she subtly turned her back to the quarterback. My understanding is it was not by accident.

Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

When I asked the McNairs about Watson later, both politely declined comment. But Hannah had made her point. She’d delivered the visual that will stick with me most from the afternoon during which the embattled star, accused by more than two dozen women of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and coming off an 11-game suspension, returned to the NFL.

Some in attendance at the half-empty stadium came to try to make a point, as Hannah McNair did. Others, from Houston and Cleveland, came to show support for Watson, believing, with the legal process complete, he should be able to move on. Many more, it seemed, were just there for a football game, and not as morality play. And Watson was there to play football.

How did he play? Well, he and the Browns got out of here with a 27–14 win. But that’s just a small part of a complex story that played out Sunday in Houston.

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It’s hard to believe we’re closing in on the final month of the regular season, but we’re here and we’ve got a lot to get to in recapping Week 13 in this week’s MMQB. Inside the column, we’ve got …

• Joe Burrow on an unselfish Bengals team staking its claim among the AFC elite.

• Nick Bosa on dominating his hometown Dolphins, and life after Jimmy Garoppolo’s season-ending injury.

• Josh Allen on his latest wow throw.

• Kevin O’Connell on a visitor he wasn’t expecting on Thanksgiving.

• All of that’s in the Ten Takeaways, and we’ll bring you notes on Georgia, TCU, Kansas State, USC and, yes, Deion Sanders in Six From Saturday.

And with that, let’s get back to Houston.

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If you arrived in Houston expecting a crowd polarized in its views on Watson, that’s really not what this was. I did a lap around the stadium at around 10:30 a.m. local time, some 90 minutes before kickoff, expecting protests and a level of unrest and unease. What I got was far from that.

If you didn’t know about the story that was unfolding inside, you’d have no clue this wasn’t just any other NFL game. At the south end of the stadium, there was a stage with a hype man getting the crowd ready to go, with a dozen cheerleaders in front of him. There were people in Texans jerseys. There were people in Browns jerseys. There was tailgating in the parking lots, and kids everywhere.

A couple of Texans execs explained the feel in the city leading into this one as being one of fatigue. Houstonians have lived the Watson story for nearly two years, which is different than how fans nationally have digested it, in reacting when new developments would emerge along the way. And so, outside the stadium, the fans loyal enough to still show up to support a team that came in at 1-9-1 were just there, again, for the football.

Inside it, though, there were small pockets of fans who felt passionate about Watson. Scottie Weaver, 44, made the trip from Columbus, Ohio, with his girlfriend. He informed me he was the man who went viral in August by bringing a “F--- Them Hoes” sign to a preseason game—having his son carrying a “Free Watson” sign to accompany it. He’d initially planned to go to the Browns’ Monday night game on Halloween against the Bengals, but pushed the trip back when Watson’s suspension was extended to 11 games.

“When they said they pushed it back, I made sure that we were gonna be here, front row, sidelines, everything,” Weaver says.

Sixteen-year-old Cameron Cerrano stood a few feet away from Weaver, wearing a half-Browns, half-Texans Watson jersey, explaining that he’d rooted for the Texans “for a long time” and started rooting for the Browns “a couple years back,” and got the jersey made as a result of that. “I thought I was gonna get some looks coming in here, but I’ve just gotten a bunch of, like, good stuff about it,” Cerrano says. “I’m not very conflicted.”

Up above him, in the lower bowl, was Solomon Steele, who made the drive from Mississippi, and wore a Browns helmet (a real one) and Watson jersey. He picked up the helmet, signed by Nick Chubb, at a Houston-area mall on this trip, for a cool $600, and bought the jersey back in the summer.

“I ordered my jersey like three months ago,” Steele says. “When they said he was coming back, first game back in Houston, I said, Man, I gotta go, bring my whole family. So we came out here like four days, just chilling, just having a good time.”

The Texans, for their part, didn’t do much to stop anyone from expressing their views on Watson. Their procedure for Sunday, I was told, was pretty much identical to what it’d be on any other Sunday. They weren’t confiscating signs, or telling people to turn shirts inside out, or doing anything outside of their normal policy on offensive messages or signs that block the view of the others in the stadium.

Frugia was among the fans who were vocal with their criticism of Watson :: Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports

And so Shannon Frugia carried a sign on the opposite side of the stadium that read “I would rather be 1-9-1 than have Deshaun Watson as my quarterback.” Frugia, wearing a red cowboy hat with a Texans logo and red sequins on it, is local and has been a Texans season-ticket holder since the franchise’s inception in 2002.

“I hate that the NFL allowed this to be the game he returned—they should be ashamed of themselves,” Frugia says. “They should’ve given him a bigger suspension. And it’s shameful that they’re allowing him to play today, of all games.”

Why?

“Because he [assaulted] 20-plus women in this city,” Frugia says. “And he’s allowed to come back and have a parade like it’s his welcome home. That’s terrible.”

Meanwhile, there was one fan—the self-styled “Ultimate Fan” (wearing Ultimate Warrior face paint to drive it home), Steve Beckholt—whom Watson made sure to say hello to before the game. After, in character, giving me a rundown on his history with Watson, and how Watson recognized him because Beckholt has been coming to games for years, I asked whether he was at all conflicted with his prior feelings for Watson.

“The man is innocent until proven guilty,” he said.

So you feel O.K., Steve?

“The man is innocent until proven guilty.”

Deshaun Watson gets a mix of boos and cheers coming out of the visiting tunnel (Loud boos at first, then some cheers). pic.twitter.com/TKiBsYZbq7

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) December 4, 2022

The football part of Watson’s return to the field, and to Houston, wasn’t as complicated. But it wasn’t really simple, either. That’s in part because Watson cost three first-round picks and $230 million guaranteed, meaning expectations were sky high. But a quarterback’s ability to operate in a pro football game, after so much time away, can’t just be turned on like a faucet.

“I mean, I can't even equate that to anything that someone in a regular 9-to-5 would do,” Browns All-Pro Myles Garrett told me as he exited the stadium. “If you were to not do your job for two years and immediately be thrust into the highest stage and have to perform at the highest level and not expect to have any faults because, you know, you're one of the best to do it in the league, that’d be crazy. Of course, you're going to have to take some time, you're gonna have to get adjusted again. This is the highest level of our occupation.

“And him not being able to get on the field, and get the timing and get acclimated to not only playing here, but playing on turf, there's a lot of different factors that go into it. It just takes an adjustment period, especially for quarterbacks. There’s so much going on, so many different looks. This team has seen him for multiple years. We're not worried at all about where he is and what type of player he can be, because he’s shown he’s been special. We’ve seen him be special on the practice field.”

But Watson, admittedly, wasn’t special Sunday. “I’ll just say I felt every one of those 700 days,” he said at his postgame press conference. Some moments were rougher than others.

One came late in the first quarter, when he threw for Amari Cooper in the end zone and simply didn’t see rookie safety Jalen Pitre, who picked him off to preserve a 3–0 Texans lead. Another came a quarter later, when the pocket collapsed on him; he threw the ball incomplete to the flat after getting swung around, nearly throwing a lateral that would’ve resulted in a touchdown.

Then, in the third quarter, there were consecutive snaps, on separate possessions, when his rust showed again. The first was a sack on third-and-5; he didn’t feel the rush correctly and climbed the pocket right into the lap of Houston’s Ogbo Okoronkwo. The second was a ball Watson bounced to Demetric Felton, up the right sideline—he threw out of play-action and simply dirted it.

“The guy hadn't played in two years,” Cooper says. “I mean, it's not like he played last week. I think he played a good game for having such a huge layoff. At the end of the day, what you really count in this league is wins and losses. And that's why it's not a one-player game. Everybody's just harping on Deshaun and his return. But at the end of the day, we all have to play good collectively.”

And in that way, the Browns did show up for Watson.

On the play after the failed throw to Felton, Kareem Hunt ripped off a 15-yard run to get Cleveland back on schedule, which sparked a drive that led to a 43-yard field goal from rookie Cade York to make it a two-possession game.

All told, the Browns defense scored two touchdowns (on a Denzel Ward fumble return and a Tony Fields pick-six), the special teams scored another (on a Donovan Peoples-Jones punt return), and a field goal was set up by a fumble on a punt. The offense had, essentially, a net of one point—they had the aforementioned field goal drive, but also took a safety—and just one drive that covered more than 45 yards.

While the offense struggled to find it's footing the defense scored two touchdowns, including a pick-six by Fields (42) :: Eric Christian Smith/AP

That said, there were positive things hidden in the muck, too. There was a third-quarter in-cut to Cooper (good for 13 yards) to convert a third down, on which he worked a backside hi-lo concept, felt the defender take the underneath man and threw it behind him to Cooper. There was another third-down throw to Cooper (this one for 10 yards) in the fourth quarter—he saw the nickel taking away the slot’s inside slant, so he threw the slant to Cooper behind him. And there was a 27-yarder to Peoples-Jones, just before the pick, when he stepped up to position himself with a free rusher coming.

Then there were the flashes he showed in extending plays and how his presence affected the way the defense could combat the Browns’ run game, with backside defenders staying home to account for him rather than crashing down on the running backs.

“Teams are going to have to respect his ability to be able to run the ball,” right tackle Jack Conklin says. “And that helps take a defender off of us that we have to deal with and helps our running backs out. I think you can see that that's going to be something that blossoms for us and helps us going forward, just his elusive ability and his speed. It's gonna be something defenses have to deal with and have to respect.”

These, of course, are baby steps. But after 700 days away, just about everyone agreed those were always going to be necessary to get Watson back up to speed. Better that they come in a win.

Now, the question is, What’s next?

Next week, in Cincinnati, there likely won’t be the crush of media. The Bengals will welcome the Browns to town at 8–4 with a lot on the line and a crowd more worried about the AFC North race than anything. There will probably be signs, and boos, and all of that. But it will also be another step for Watson, because with each week, the story line and crowd around Watson will fade. That’s just how these things work.

The Browns hope they can keep buying him time to get comfortable, and he, in turn, can get closer to who he was two years ago.

“We’re just making sure that he knows that he doesn’t have to be perfect. He doesn’t have to be Superman,” Garrett says. “We’re gonna be able to make plays, as well. And when his time comes, we need a play, we know he’s gonna be able to make it. “

Whether he should have been afforded the chance, at this point, is another question. But that question wasn’t going to be answered Sunday. Nor were many others, football or otherwise, over a very weird weekend in Houston.