The Deshaun Watson situation remains interesting, as it’s dragged out through the entire offseason, and still doesn’t appear anywhere close to finality at this time.
Watson demanded a trade out of Houston shortly after the 2020 NFL season ended, but he lost a lot of leverage due to off-field issues. He’s currently facing 22 charges, including sexual misconduct, harassment and assault. That’s probably why his camp has been so quiet over the past few months, attempting to keep his name out of the news cycle, probably hoping he’d either get the cases thrown out, or settle outside of court.
It’s now just a few weeks until Texans training camp opens (same with the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which you can watch on live stream here) and not much has changed. Watson still doesn’t appear to want to play for the Texans, and the charges haven’t gone away, either. Not only that, it appears likely that he’ll land on the commissioner’s exempt list, which would really hurt his trade stock, as he’d be ineligible to play.
On that front, though, it looks like he and his camp are trying to plant the seed that Watson would like to play for the Broncos, according to a rumor from ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
“Don’t sleep on Denver here, because I have been told that Watson has long been intrigued by the Broncos,” Fowler reported on SportsCenter. “They have good options on offense and Denver is believed to be one of the teams that’s, from afar, monitoring the quarterback landscape around the league, Watson included.”
It’s no secret that the Broncos are in the market for a quarterback, given their apparent pursuit of Aaron Rodgers. As for Watson, well, he looks like he’d be open to playing anywhere that isn’t Houston, and Denver is a legitimate Super Bowl contender, so the fit makes sense, on paper. But his legal issues are likely the biggest roadblock standing in the way of getting a deal done.