BRIAN T. SMITH
As Deshaun Watson wins increasing respect on the field, his community voice broadens
Watson’s voice carries power in the locker room and community.
Deshaun Watson is already the most talented quarterback in Texans history. He should soon receive the most important contract in team history. He could become the best player in team history, leading the Texans to an elevated international stage for the first time since the former expansion franchise entered the NFL in 2002. Add the above together, remember that D4 is still just 24 years old, and it’s easy to see where this could all end up. Watson as the most powerful player in Texans history. Watson possessing the loudest and most respected voice on Kirby Drive.
As currently constructed, the Texans are still shaped to fit the vision of their head coach/general manager. As Bill O’Brien goes, so go the Texans.
But in three years? Five? Ten?
Patrick Mahomes, 24, is already a Super Bowl champion and MVP. The Chiefs quarterback holds an ownership stake in Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals and has become one of the NFL’s most marketable and recognizable faces after just three pro seasons.
The QB drafted just two spots behind Showtime Mahomes clearly has the talent, personality, charisma, cool swagger and inner drive to eventually dominate the sports conversation in the fourth-largest city in America.
Like Mahomes, Watson is just getting started. And with everything that has unfolded in 2020, the public has started to see a different side of Watson.
Outspoken. Opinionated. A leader on the field and outside the lines.
“As you gain more experience in the league and you play really at a high level like he has, you gain a voice. You gain the respect of the locker room, which he has,” O’Brien said. “Relative to in the building, he comes in early, he lifts early, he’s watching film. He’s in here. He’s talking to his teammates. Even though we’re divided into three locker rooms, we have a lot of the receivers and the running backs in the main locker room, so they’re talking after practice.
“Off the field, I don’t know too much about everything that goes on with him. I know that he does a great job. He’s very passionate about social justice and those things. He’s just a great guy. He’s a good person. He cares about his teammates, he cares about the team, and he’s a winner. I just think he’s doing a good job year in and year out of getting better at those things.”
Watson was a national champion and Heisman Trophy runner-up at Clemson. On April 27, 2017, he instantly changed the Texans’ future when then-GM Rick Smith led a push to trade up in the draft and select the quarterback.
Three years later, Watson is a two-time Pro Bowler with a 24-13 record, 9,716 passing yards, 1,233 rushing yards, 86 total touchdowns and a playoff victory.
J.J. Watt is a three-time Defensive Player of the Year and was rewarded with a $100 million contract extension in 2014. Watt at times dealt with crushing and intrusive fame, spending the majority of the last decade as the Texans’ most popular player and one of the biggest names in the league. The 2017 Walter Payton Man of the Year recipient has been impressed with how Watson has handled his everincreasing platform.
“He’s done a good job with it. He understands the situation he’s in,” Watt said. “He’s come from a situation where he has won national championships. He’s been there for the Heisman. He’s done all of those things, so he’s kind of built up that reputation. He’s also lived through it, so he knows how to handle big moments. He knows how to handle those situations and not let it get to him and not let it knock him off his course. The work always comes first, and I think he does a good job with that and does a good job with our team.”
Watson was the best thing about the Texans during last season’s 22-19 overtime victory over the Buffalo Bills in an AFC home wild-card game, answering a 16-0 late third-quarter deficit with 247 passing yards, 55 yards on the ground, two TDs and an unbelievable double-spin move that still makes the social-media rounds more than seven months later.
Watson’s initial social-media reaction to a still controversial March trade centered on AllPro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins was almost as powerful. Fans immediately wanted to know what the Texans’ franchise QB thought about the stunning deal. Every word, action and tweeted song lyric was picked apart.
Watson ultimately backed his team and head coach/GM.
But if D4 had publicly chosen the opposite route? Longfrustrated Texans fans would have proudly backed the team’s QB, not O’Brien.
Three months later, Watson used his growing voice another way. He attended a June rally in downtown Houston in honor of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis after a police officer kneeled on his neck.
“For the Floyd Family!” Watson tweeted.
A photo of Watson at the rally spread rapidly on Twitter.
A day later, O’Brien passionately backed his players, speaking out for racial justice and in defense of peaceful protests.
Watson again led the Texans on and off the field.
“It’s grown in the way of just knowledge and learning,” Watson said. “There’s a lot of different things I’ve seen, especially with social justice, politics and things like that, but I didn’t really understand fully. I understand the side that I grew up on, but I didn’t understand the other side. So being able to understand both sides and then knowing who I am as a person and what I believe in, then I can be able to speak up. I don’t want to speak up on something, and then a question pops up later, and I don’t have a reason or knowledge behind what I said. Everything is timing, and everything is just learning. That’s what I’ve been doing this past offseason, and so I’ve been able to speak up more about it.”
If this all works out like it is supposed to for Watson and the Texans, D4 has only begun to utilize the ringing power of his young voice.