Questioning Deshaun Watson's Desire To Play Was Always Unfounded
Since his arrival in Cleveland in the spring of 2022, Deshaun Watson's mere presence on the Browns roster opened up a Pandora's box of criticism that even this long dilapidated franchise had never seen.
It was understandable. When a team welcomes a player in the midst of two dozen sexual assault allegations into their building with open arms, it was going to raise some eyebrows and, perhaps more awkwardly, divide the fan base.
But Watson returned to football last December with the majority of those cases settled, having served an 11-game suspension. His sole focus: reclaiming the player he was for the better part of four years in Houston, and attempt to convince fans that he's not the person he was accused of being.
Neither of those things were going to happen over night. "Winning cures all" as the saying goes and so to get there, Watson would have to build up plenty of good will with the fan base.
10 starts into his tenure here in Cleveland, this experience hasn't been smooth. The six games he played in last winter were ugly – a "shaking off the rust" period after 700 days away from football. This year, with an offense tailor-made for the 28-year-old QB, he produced two rough outings before a signature performance against the Titans in Week 3, that felt like a proverbial turning of the corner.
Sike! Cue the rotator cuff injury that has plagued Watson ever since. He's missed weeks of practice. He's missed games. He tried to play in Week 7 with the injury clearly still bothering him and it was a colossal disaster.
All this time away, combined with some truly strange messaging from the team regarding the injury left outsiders to their own devices. Imaginations wandered.
"Does he even want to play?"
"His contract is fully guaranteed, what does he need to play for?"
"Is he reconsidering joining the Browns?"
These were just some of the question levied against the Browns QB in recent weeks, from football pundits like Brady Quinn, among others.
Watson pushed back vehemently this week on those questioning his desire to play.
"Why wouldn't I want to play?" asked Watson, chuckling to himself. "I just worked my ass off for two years to get back to playing. So why wouldn't I want to play?
"This is what I've been doing since I was six years old but I see the same things. I see all the narratives, this, that, the third. All that stuff is just trying to stir up controversy and commotion."
Whatever criticism Watson faces in the aftermath of his off the field situation is his, and his alone to own. Questions over his desire to play football, however, were always nonsensical.
That argument evaporates pretty quickly after seeing Watson attempt to play last weekend against the Colts. Watson himself admitted this week that he tried to play because he essentially thought the shoulder was good enough to go, then quickly realized it wasn't and was removed from the game following a scary hit.
"I wasn't 100-percent last week, Watson said. "Going through the game, going through the process of seeing if I can make the throws. I thought I was ready, wasn't ready."
It doesn't add up that a player who apparently doesn't want to play football anymore would force the issue and play through an injury before it's totally healed.
Not only that, but Watson has a lot more at stake every time he takes the field than maybe any player. There's no black and white with him being the controversial player he is. If he plays poorly, there's a parade of NFL fans ready to tell him he's worthless and clown the organization for trading for him.
It doesn't benefit him in any way to play through this rotator cuff injury. Unless of course he maybe, just maybe he does want to play. And just like so many in this grueling sport, he too has that competitive drive, that itch, to play.
Reasonably, questions about how the injury was explained by the organization are warranted. For the situation to go from, "he's playing," in Week 4 to, "he's focusing on rehabbing," in Week 8 is odd. Frankly, it's pretty obvious the organization should have put him on the IR from jump street. Those are totally reasonable things to ponder.
If Watson can't play, he can't play. He's injured. It's football. To question his "want to" throughout this entire saga though, is flatly baseless.
