The Weird, Wacky and Awesome World of the NFL - General Banter thread V3

The Deshaun Watson lawsuit number is now 24.

Yeah I saw his lawyer taking on Friday and now it seems he was getting ahead of the 24th case. It was a **** joke when the initial reports came out but the NFL need to put him on the commissioners list now. The fact that he can potentially play this season is ridiculous.

As a Browns fan, I'm still incredibly disappointed that they signed Watson. They said they did their due diligence on him but obviously they didn't with more and more lawsuits adding up. Give $230 million guaranteed and 3 first round picks for this guy? I love the team and guys like Chubb, Garrett, Ward etc, but I can't support Watson. The Haslams have put a lot of Browns fans in an awful position.

What started as a conversation about a 6 game suspension turned to 8 and now is looking likely to be at least a year, I'd say. Nothing in that latest lawsuit is particularly any different from the others, it's just more in the public domain. What started with the line innocent until proven guilty which was used even back in March when he signed for the Browns has quickly turned with even some of the stuff his lawyer was saying on Friday was awful.

On a side note, what is interesting is that Baker Mayfield is still with the Browns while all this is going on. I can't see him playing again for the Browns after what has happened but if Watson is gone for the foreseeable future, you never know.

Roger Goddell is a smart guy...and will know Watson's contract. I wouldn't be surprised if he's allowed play this year on his little year 1 money, then the Comish suspends him in year 2 when the big money kicks in! These suits are going to take some time to play out, that could be all the Comish needs to delay a suspension.

Goddell is interested in nothing more than protecting the NFL brand and the assests of the NFL and its teams. Watson shows all the hallmarks of a predator (more than 100 women hired for a 'massage' in 17 months) and should never be allowed to set foot on a football field again. But - he is an asset for a team - so he likely will. Mike Florio put forward an argument in recent days that the NFL should put Watson on paid leave for this season - i.e. he would get paid his $1million salary. He would be told that he needs to resolve the lawsuits within that time period. Then - the NFL should subsequently suspend him next year when the big money kicks in (next year his base salary is $46million). A two year suspension would be great - it would cost Watson almost $100m - and it would also teach the Browns a lesson for trying to fix his contract so that he would not get a big hit when suspended (but a 2 year hit is unlikely to happen).

The problem for the Browns - and why no team should have traded for Watson - is that a predator will not change, and it would not be a surprise if more claims emerged about Watson in the future.

To defend the Browns a little bit, I've often seen it said about how the Browns gave Watson $1 million as his base salary for the first year expecting him to get suspended and so Watson would still get that huge guaranteed amount in his contract and that may well be true, but Myles Garrett's base salary is just $1 million next year as is Nick Chubb's, Denzel Ward's and Amari Cooper's. It seems to be franchise policy. The Browns currently have the most cap space in the NFL at the moment by some distance for this reason and that's also with Baker Mayfield still on the roster.

I think the Browns are already regretting the trade and as I said at the time it felt like they did a deal with the devil to try and win a superbowl. Revelations in the past couple of days have taken even his lawyer by surprise so undoubtedly the Browns didn't know either. I am expecting a very long suspension now and I'd say there is a decent chance of him never playing again in the NFL as he won't ever be able to get away from this saga and also who knows what other revelations are to come in the future as this was simply predator behaviour.

Baker Mayfield traded to Carolina from the Browns for a conditional 5th round pick in 2024.

He had a salary of $18 million due this season and the Browns have agreed to pay $10.5 million of that.

Carolina play Cleveland in Week 1.

It's a decent deal for the Panthers in my view. Baker isn't going to win you a Superbowl but he is definitely an NFL starting quarterback. Mad that they now have the top two quarterbacks taken in 2018 draft.

For the Browns, well they have made a mess of this off-season but on this deal alone, it's probably best to move on before training camp begins.

Zac Wilson is making a name for himself

Once Watson reset the market this was inevitable.

The lads you're putting ahead of him there, Brady (drafted '01), Rodgers ('06), Stafford ('10) shows how rare a draft pick QB works out. Arizona got a top 10 QB with a number one overall pick. Would they be able to do it again? A lot have failed in the past 5/10 years.

IMO you draft a QB in the first round hoping he'll be good enough to give a 2nd contract to them in 3/4 years time.

That clause in Kyler Murray’s contract about him having to do four hours of independent study a week on a team provided table which they can check and he can’t watch TV of play video games while doing it is so revealing and maybe if the cardinals owner asked for that to be put in, then as I said he shouldn’t have given the contact to him. He’s an adult ffs and an NFL QB who’s just got a lot of money in a new contract. He shouldn’t need to have supervised study, he should be motivated enough to do it on his own back. And you know the press will have a field day with it asking him did he do his homework this week.