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The Houston Texans were negligent and turned a blind eye to the behavior of quarterback Deshaun Watson, according to NBC analyst Mike Florio. The former Texans quarterback recently had a 24th sexual misconduct lawsuit filed against him, and now his former franchise are starting to receive some scrutiny.
On the show Pro Football Talk, Florio asserted that Houston knew or should’ve known about Watson’s behavior.
“Part of what Jenny Vrentas discovered, and again, there's no smoking gun that shows the Texans knew. But the standard that that applies in many settings is knew or should have known, knew or should have known. That's the negligence standard. What did you know? What should you have known? What would a reasonable person have known?”
Florio went on to say:
“What would a reasonable person have done? And the idea that they had facilities for him and that he was using the idea that they gave him NDA language that he was just having all these people signed to keep it all quiet and keep it all hush hush and he just acted like it was normal?”
Florio seems to believe that the Texans at least should have known about it. That at some point they would have heard about his massage therapy sessions and considered his behavior:
“There is a question about what the Texans knew when they knew it, whether they knew or whether they should have known. Should they have known what he was doing?... But at what point put yourselves folks in the shoes of anyone in Texans management? At what point? Does the light bulb go off? ‘Is it possible this guy is just lining up massage after massage on social media? Because he's got some weird fetish, that he likes to go get a massage and then try to make it into a sexual encounter.'”
He concluded his point by saying:
“And there may be some folks who are objecting to this, and there's going to be a landslide of litigation and there's going to be criminal complaints. And at what point does that light bulb begin to flicker?”
Deshaun Watson and his tenure with the Texans
Per a New York Times report by Vrentas, Watson met at least 66 women for massages from the fall of 2019 through the spring of last year. The report states that the quarterback had assistance from the Texans, including NDAs (non-discosure agreements), in the scheduling of appointments.
Watson was drafted by the team in the first round of the 2017 NFL by Houston, starting 53 games for the franchise. He made the Pro Bowl three times in his time there and led the league in passing yards with 4,823 yards in the 2020 season.
This offseason, he was traded to the Cleveland Browns and later given a five-year, $230 million contract.
The question remains as to whether Watson will suit up for the 2022 season for the Browns. The NFL were drawing their investigation into the quarterback to a close, however with the two latest allegations he faces, it seems that the investigation will take a while longer.
It will be interesting to see what happens next as this storyline develops.
