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QB Deshaun Watson, CLE (3 Viewers)

So that guy who hates women and swore up and down this was all a lie and anyone doubting Watson was 100% innocent was a cuck appears to have completely erased his tracks from this thread.  Unless I'm missing something.  Interesting.

 
Damn. He was the Texans’ beat writer with the most accurate info. Now we’re left with last-to-know McClain 🙄
Accuracy aside, its amazing he didn't think through the potential blowback of his way over the line commentary.  I hate the PC movement, but dude went off.

 
Accuracy aside, its amazing he didn't think through the potential blowback of his way over the line commentary.  I hate the PC movement, but dude went off.
I have always followed Wilson on Twitter, hope he lands on his feet.  I have to assume he is friends with Watson, and went HAM defending him.  

Total rookie move by Wilson however.  "Hey, wanna come on Boston sports talk radio and discuss Deshaun Watson?"

Ummm, the correct answer is NO.  

 
Total rookie move by Wilson however.  "Hey, wanna come on Boston sports talk radio and discuss Deshaun Watson?"

Ummm, the correct answer is NO.  
Sad state of affairs. Journalists are now heads of state and judges all at once. Those were dumb comments. Move on. This is a preëmptive strike against the outrage machine that exists in our culture.

Somehow if you catch me on a bad day and in a bad situation I'm enough of a contrarian to say #### that rises to a fireable offense. For sure. Especially on Boston talk radio with those guys. Who was he talking with, Felger and Mazz? They're so stupid they make me want to Spicoli myself with my shoe.

I'M SO STONED!

Ah, I see it was Greg Hill. I have no idea who that is. Hope it was worth it, I guess.

 
FMIA: 20 QB Decisions Shaping This NFL Offseason, Draft Like No Other

Excerpt:

2. I think, not to harp on Watson, but three things happened in the past week that were bad for him.

• The cases against him got two faces—two massage therapists who spoke publicly against him. One, Ashley Solis, said of Watson: “I got into massage therapy to heal people, to heal their minds and bodies and to bring peace to souls. He took that away from me and he tainted a profession in which I take enormous pride. Flashes of Watson’s face rush to me in a moment. I think of his penis touching me, which sends me into a tailspin. I suffer from panic attacks, anxiety and depression . . . I hope he knows how much pain he has inflicted on me emotionally and physically.”

• Watson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, did not do a smart thing when he said Solis sought “hush money” to make the case go away. As Mike Florio, a former attorney, wrote at Pro Football Talk:

“Although Hardin uses the term ‘hush money’ to describe the opening settlement demand, the email messages disclosed by Hardin reveal the standard type of pre-litigation communications in which lawyers engage in an attempt to resolve potential claims without litigation by going back and forth in the hopes of reaching a consensus. [Attorney] Scott Gaffield wrote on Watson’s behalf. ‘As I said to [plaintiff’s attorney] Cornelia [Brandfield-Harvey] last week, we don’t believe that the alleged facts show that Deshaun did anything wrong with regards to Ms. Solis, but we are nevertheless happy to continue the conversation around a reasonable settlement figure because we believe he can learn a lesson about having put himself in this situation.’ In other words, Watson’s camp was willing to consider paying something to settle the case because, as Gaffield said, ‘we believe he can learn a lesson about having put himself in this situation.’ … It shows that Watson’s representatives viewed the claims made by Ashley Solis as something that weren’t frivolous but that instead provided a useful opportunity to teach Watson a ‘lesson about having put himself in this situation.’ “

Not good for Watson’s case.

• The rhetoric, and consequences, are ratcheting up. The NFL called Solis’ words “deeply disturbing.” Nike dropped Watson and told CNBC: “We are deeply concerned by the disturbing allegations and have suspended Deshaun Watson.” Beats by Dre and Reliant Energy will no longer do business with Watson.

As one NFL coach told me Saturday, you cannot dismiss Solis’ words, or her emotion. Now, what actually happened is still cloudy, and Watson’s side has produced 18 women who say he never did anything untoward in their sessions over the past five years. But we’ve gone from wondering who would trade for Watson a month ago to wondering two more dire things: Will he play football at all in 2021, and will he be found guilty of any charge of sexual assault, the kind of thing that would put a scarlet letter on Watson for the rest of his career?

 
20 of 21 agreed to proceed with their names revealed in court documents.  1 dismissed due to "privacy concerns".

"Team Buzbee" says the previously attempted to provide the names to "Team Watson" under the condition that the names would be protected and restricted to legal matters, and that Team Watson refused.

Neither of these updates is a particularly good look for Team Watson.

 
I don’t see any chance of him not missing games this season. Zero.

Regarding the law suit: let it play out. Football will take a backseat.
My thinking is  he only misses a handful of games, but anything can happen.

 
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As more Deshaun Watson accusers go public, their attorney rails against quarterback’s response

HOUSTON — The phone call Tony Buzbee had been expecting came one night in mid-March, he said, as he was driving to dinner.

Buzbee is the wealthy, flamboyant civil attorney who just days earlier had announced via Instagram the first in a wave of lawsuits accusing Deshaun Watson, the Houston Texans’ star quarterback, of harassing and assaulting women during massages. He answered the phone to hear the gravelly twang of the lawyer famous sports figures in this city turn to when they are accused of wrongdoing: Rusty Hardin.

The men exchanged pleasantries, Buzbee recalled, and then Buzbee made an offer.

“Your guy’s got some kind of weird problem ... alleged problem,” Buzbee said he told Hardin. “This is already spiraling in a bad direction. ... Why don’t we try to resolve this now?”

Buzbee had filed three lawsuits against Watson by then, and he told Hardin he had another four ready to go, he said. Buzbee had tried to settle weeks earlier, he told Hardin, but had been rebuffed by the quarterback’s management at the firm Athletes First, whom Buzbee characterized to Hardin, he said, as “arrogant, dismissive jackasses.”

According to Buzbee, Hardin asked to have until 5 p.m. the next day to confer with Watson and his management. At 7 p.m. the following day, Buzbee said, he got a text from Hardin informing him there would be no settlement.

“And away we go,” Buzbee said during an hour-long interview Wednesday, in which he offered the most detailed account to date of the legal battle behind the scandal that has engulfed the career of one of the NFL’s most promising young stars.

Hardin, in a brief phone interview Wednesday, disputed the veracity of some of Buzbee’s remarks but declined to get into specifics, citing a wave of legal filings he plans to make next week.

“There are many inaccuracies in what Tony has said, but I would rather address them in court filings than in an article,” Hardin said.

The legal wrangling intensified this week, with Buzbee refiling most of 21 lawsuits, initially made anonymously, with the names of the accusers. The women all provide similar accounts, alleging the star quarterback contacted them via Instagram over the past year to arrange massages in which he then attempted to get them to gratify him sexually. The accusations against Watson range from exposing himself and forcing his penis against women’s hands while making suggestive remarks to masturbating and, in two cases, forcing women to perform oral sex on him.

Three more of Buzbee’s clients recently spoke to Houston police, Buzbee said Wednesday, bringing the publicly known total of accusers involved with the law enforcement investigation of Watson to five. A spokesman for Houston police declined to comment.

Watson and his legal team have denied any allegations of wrongdoing with women. Hardin has acknowledged the quarterback arranged massages over the past year via Instagram, which the attorney partially blamed on the coronavirus pandemic shutting down Houston’s spa industry. But he said any sex acts that may have occurred during massages were consensual.

Ashley Solis, the first woman to come forward, contacted Buzbee’s firm in late January, he said. While Buzbee rose to legal fame and wealth primarily through large cases against oil companies, his firm routinely handles civil sexual assault cases against universities, corporations and prominent local figures, he said.

“Most people know that if I’m involved, they probably want to resolve the case,” Buzbee said. But he said that in his initial conversations with Scott Gaffield, general counsel for Athletes First, it quickly became clear that Watson’s management didn’t take the case seriously.

“I said: ‘Let me tell you how this is going to go down: I’m going to file the case. The press is going to pick it up. It’s going to be a circus. ... He’s going to have to hire Rusty Hardin.’ And here we are,” Buzbee said. “This guy was so clueless about how things work.”

Presented with Buzbee’s version of events, Gaffield declined to comment Wednesday, referring a reporter to an earlier statement in which he said: “We did not think that the facts showed that Deshaun did anything wrong with their client. ... We expect that this matter will be resolved in court.”

Buzbee said he initially suggested the sides enter in private, confidential mediation. Gaffield rejected that, Buzbee said, and asked for a demand letter outlining what Solis wanted. Buzbee offered to settle the case for $100,000, he said, which Gaffield also rejected.

“We don’t believe that the alleged facts show that Deshaun did anything wrong ... but we are nevertheless happy to continue the conversation around a reasonable settlement figure because we believe he can learn a lesson about having put himself in this situation,” Gaffield wrote Feb. 19 in an email Watson’s legal team publicly released this month.

“He wanted us to bid against ourselves,” Buzbee said. “And I was done.”

Buzbee expected more accusers would come forward, he said, but even he was surprised at the flood of calls. He has five attorneys working on the cases, he said, and every client has been vetted for some proof they dealt with Watson, most of them with messages exchanged with the quarterback via Instagram.

Buzbee declined to provide any of his clients for interviews, however, and asked The Washington Post not to contact them. He praised Solis as “a warrior” for ignoring his advice to drop the case, out of concern for the duress inherent in a high-profile lawsuit involving accusations of sexual wrongdoing against someone wealthy and famous. He said Solis endured harassing comments on social media, including a few death threats, after she spoke at a news conference April 6.

Watson, as Buzbee expected, hired Hardin, the criminal defense attorney whose long list of high-profile cases includes those involving former Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens, former Houston Rockets Calvin Murphy and Steve Francis, and accounting firm Arthur Andersen. In his first extensive public remarks about the case last week, Hardin criticized Buzbee and his clients for engaging in a “new kind of extortion using social media and salacious innuendo.”

Buzbee laughed and mocked this defense and other remarks Hardin made last week.

“Rusty and I get along smashingly. ... He’s a fighter, he’s smart, and he’s good on his feet. … But I think he’s been dealt a bad hand here,” Buzbee said.

To Hardin’s explanation that Watson turned to Instagram to arrange massages because of the pandemic?

“Because of covid, he was reaching out to dozens of different people on Instagram? For massages? ... Because of covid, you would think he would have one person who had tested negative,” Buzbee said.

To Hardin’s argument that any sex acts that occurred in these massages with Watson were consensual?

“So you’ve just told the world who’s watching that your client paid for sex? … My grandma always said: ‘You’re digging yourself a hole already. Stop digging,’” Buzbee said.

Minutes later, Buzbee walked out of his office on the 73rd floor of the tallest building in Texas, past walls decorated with press clippings celebrating his legal career and conference rooms with door handles shaped like sharks. He joked, toward the end of the interview, that he would be willing to bet $100,000 that Watson’s managers wished they had settled with him back in February.

“This has gone pretty much the way I thought it would so far, but we’ll see where it goes from here,” he said. “I’m encouraged and optimistic.”

 
My thinking is  he only misses a handful of games, but anything can happen.
I'm not sure he plays in ONE game this season. Civil litigations could last for 2-3 years before coming to trial - unless he settles with NDAs in the next few months the NFL will have little choice than to place him on the exempt list. I do not think he plays until this case is over one way or the other - and that's assuming there's no criminal charges levied against him.

 
What’s a handful? Why would he only be suspended for 2 or 4 games? If the nfl has enough to sit him down it’s not only going to be 2 or 4 games. 
perhaps 8, but he could never play again.  I don't think anyone really knows.  What i do know is that I would rather hold and get nothing than trade him for BS and regret it later.

 
What’s a handful? Why would he only be suspended for 2 or 4 games? If the nfl has enough to sit him down it’s not only going to be 2 or 4 games. 
Probably but granted it's been a decade we actually have precedence of a star QB settling sexual assault claims and ultimately only being forced to miss 4 games.

 
Probably but granted it's been a decade we actually have precedence of a star QB settling sexual assault claims and ultimately only being forced to miss 4 games.
Did Ben have this many potential women coming forward? I honestly don’t know. But yea, time’s have changed. 

 
Did Ben have this many potential women coming forward? I honestly don’t know. But yea, time’s have changed. 
Ben had the 2 accusations, though the accusations were more severe IMO. But yes times have changed,  which I acknowledged, but also who hands down the length of suspension changed as well, it's not Roger anymore.

I'm just trying to say we don't really know. Especially if the NFL determines in their investigation he may have acted improperly but not to the point of forcing himself on anyone or anyone to do anything against their will. Would I predict longer then 4 games? You bet, but we just don't know yet.

 
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I think you're looking at 6-8 if all it turns out to be is the civil lawsuits, if the criminal ones aren't dismissed then all bets are off.

 
Texans general manager Nick Caserio refused to address Deshaun Watson's trade availability or legal matters. 

The always-prickly Caserio rebuffed reporters' questions about Houston's franchise QB, who has reportedly said he won't play for the Texans and faces more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct. "If you want to speculate, you should probably go buy Bitcoin, focus on that," Caserio said during Friday's press conference. Caserio wrote off the rocky start to his tenure as the team's general manager, pointing out there are people on earth with worse problems. He said he's trying to "put the best team together possible." The Texans, as of today, have arguably the worst roster in the NFL after a series of baffling free agency signings. Journeyman Tyrod Taylor, meanwhile, is on pace to start the season as Houston's QB. 

RELATED: 

Tyrod Taylor

SOURCE: Tom Pelissero on Twitter 

Apr 16, 2021, 12:10 PM ET

 
Curious if anyone in dynasty SF leagues have recently sold, and if so what did you get? Best offer I've had so far is moving Watson and Wayne Gallman for Winston, 1.5, and 2.4. I hate to give up on him, I think he's a top 3 dynasty QB...but is it time to consider this??

 
Curious if anyone in dynasty SF leagues have recently sold, and if so what did you get? Best offer I've had so far is moving Watson and Wayne Gallman for Winston, 1.5, and 2.4. I hate to give up on him, I think he's a top 3 dynasty QB...but is it time to consider this??
I essentially just traded Chase Edmunds for him (before the Connor signing).  I have plenty of RB’s but basically only Wilson at QB.  Figured I can ride Wilson while Watson is out. And I do think he’ll be out a year.  But hopefully by then the Texans won’t be such a mess.  

 

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