Watson will take high road on trade
Deshaun Watson is not happy.
How could he be when the Texans traded his favorite receiver, his best receiver, the Texans’ most productive offensive player?
All Watson could do was log on to social media and echo the sentiment of almost every Texans fan in the immediate aftermath of the DeAndre Hopkins trade: “Man this is crazy!” Crazy isn’t a strong enough word to describe the move that sent the best wide receiver in football to Arizona for a versatile but oft-injured running back and a secondround draft pick.
Other Texans players were similarly dumbfounded.
Kenny Stills, who last season led the Texans in yards per catch and was second to Hopkins in touchdown receptions among wide receivers, also posted a reaction, pre
sumably.
His was a popular gif of Rockets guard Russell Westbrook, then with Oklahoma City, with an incredulous expression that came during an interview session with Westbrook saying “What? … I’m out. Y’all … trippin’.”
Thank goodness Watson believes in his head coach, or he’d want out. Because O’Brien is indeed trippin’. Ego-trippin’.
Which he has been given every right to do. See, Janice McNair and her son Cal might own the Texans, but this is O’Brien’s team, his organization.
After years of making rookie head coach mistakes, O’Brien is now making rookie general manager errors.
While it is maddening to many, Watson is merely the face of the franchise. He has little say-so and few rights.
He is under contract for another year, and thanks to the NFL players’ collective bargaining agreement, the Texans could control him for two more seasons after that if they chose to place franchise tags on him.
As an up-and-coming quarterback who is already a star player and has already delivered superstar performances, Watson is due a humongous payday. It should come in the next few months.
He absolutely will not demand a trade. Not only does Watson like playing for O’Brien, in the NFL, the quiet bird gets the worm.
Expect Watson to follow the lead of Tom Brady. (Too bad O’Brien isn’t Bill Belichick.)
No matter how many Code
Reds that Belichick ordered, Brady was always the good soldier.
He wasn’t happy about many of the moves the team made, but he understood that the best way to win championships was to be a quarterback and lead the team on the field while allowing Belichick to run the show off it.
Brady mostly bit his tongue as Belichick let star player after star player walk over a few dollars here or there. It was an amazing display of trust and fortitude.
When Watson does speak, he’ll borrow from Brady and say the NFL is a business and it isn’t his job to make those decisions. He’s just a player.
The difference is Belichick gave Brady plenty of reasons to believe.
He inserted Brady, who was just in his second year, into the starting lineup when veteran No. 1 overall pick Drew Bledsoe was injured and stuck with the youngster when Bledsoe returned.
The Patriots won the Super Bowl that year, and a dynasty was born.
While four division titles in six seasons deserves polite applause, the O’Brien Era with the Texans isn’t anywhere near a dynasty.
It is a run highlighted by as many historic failures as monumental victories.
Who coached the NFL’s worst home shutout in the playoffs since the NFL-AFL merger?
Who coached the only team in NFL history to lead a game by 24 points in the first half and trail at halftime?
Who coached the only team ever to be ahead by 20 points in a game and manage to lose said game by 20 points?
How many games the Texans win in 2020 will depend in large part on Watson outplaying O’Brien’s missteps.
Like Brady, Watson will be called upon to set the tone for a team that is definitely benefiting from social distancing right about now.
Hopkins’ Texans teammates and others around the NFL recognize his value, even if O’Brien doesn’t. In his last game as a Texan, the man caught nine passes for 118 yards while playing with a broken rib and a dislocated finger.
Hopkins was more than just Watson’s go-to guy in clutch situations. He was his full-time security blanket.
Watson threw 495 passes last season. Hopkins was the target for 150 of those (30.3 percent). The year before that, the number of targets (163) and percentage (32.3) were even higher.
As a rookie, Watson went in Hopkins’ direction with 33 percent of the passes he threw.
That year, Watson started just six games. He missed the final nine games with a knee injury; the other missed start, the season opener, was due to his head coach not knowing what he was doing.
Watson didn’t hold that against O’Brien. Publicly at least, Watson doesn’t hold much of anything against his head coach.
They have a great work relationship.
So as crazy as it is, Watson will get over the Hopkins trade.