Sometimes it’s who has already been credibly accused many times

I haven’t been this surprised by someone’s alleged misconduct since Donald Trump’s last indictment:

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has been accused of a 2020 sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Monday in Texas. The lawsuit, a copy of which has been obtained and reviewed by CBS Sports, was filed by attorney Tony Buzbee, who also represented many of the 25-plus women that previously sued Watson for varying degrees of sexual assault.

The prior lawsuits were settled out of court. The NFL penalized Watson with an 11-game suspension ahead of the 2022 season. 

Watson is being accused of sexual assault and battery in the latest lawsuit. The woman, referred to as “Jane Doe,” alleges that an extremely disturbing encounter with Watson occurred at her home in October 2020. 

“This is an extremely serious matter,” Buzbee said in a statement to CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones. “We intend to pursue this case with the same aggressiveness with which we pursued the others. We want a jury trial. As far as any specific comments on the facts of the case, we believe the lawsuit speaks for itself.”

What is very Cleveland Browns about this is that even leaving aside the moral considerations — which really should have been dispositive — the decision to trade for Watson is probably the worst trade in NFL history solely in football terms. The Browns traded 6 draft picks, including 3 first rounders, and then signed him to an unprecedented fully guaranteed $230 million contract. In return for this investment, Watson has been hurt more often that he’s been healthy, and he has been atrocious when he does play. He ranks #27 in the PFF rankings, between the unemployed-on-opening day Ryan Tannehill and Adain O’Connell (the backup for a bad Raiders team), and he looks equally bad in other advanced metrics — in purely footall terms he’s basically been a QB of the caliber of Kenny Pickett or Mitch Trubisky since joining the Browns, a mid-level backup and unacceptable starter. And not only is he untradeable he is essentially uncuttable until at least 2026. And not only that, the Browns already had a roughly league-average QB who led a team to the playoffs last year for $4 million.

I suppose the Browns could now try to release him for cause, but (particularly in the absence of an actual judgment) I would guess that’s going to be a very, very hard case to make given what they knew about Watson when they traded for him. This is a rare case where an amoral rich white guy actually got what was coming to him.