This is my 15th season covering Houston Texans training camp, and in that much time, you definitely see some strange things, experience some awkward moments. I mean, it’s not a reach to say that I’ve probably covered nearly 1,000 players in that time frame. You cover 1,000 players and the law of averages tells you that you’re going to see some stuff.
So I say this with that backdrop and with nary a hint of hyperbole — the first day of Houston Texans training camp yesterday was the most surreal, bizarre, and in some ways, sad days of training camp that I’ve experienced in those 15 seasons. Against what would have been gargantuan odds back in February, before the lawsuits against him began flying, Deshaun Watson took the field for a team that he has less than zero desire to play for ever again.
I’ll take you through the visual chronology of the morning, and then close with thoughts on this practice and where the two sides go from here. As you can see below, the normally gregarious and outgoing Watson made his way to the practice facility by himself, in a hoodie, with a mask that covered up nearly his whole face.
At every other training camp he’s been a part of, Watson is among the first to arrive at every drill. When the sessions change, and the position groups have to jog to the next drill, Watson was always in front of the pack. On Wednesday, he was the last one out of the building to start off practice (see below) and he was clearly lagging behind his teammates going drill to drill:
Watson DID get to play a nice game of catch with the guy who will be taking over his job, Tyrod Taylor:
NOTE: The passes Taylor threw in the video above were just a few of the rare passes that he didn’t sail over a teammate’s head or have knocked down at the line of scrimmage. Indeed, Watson was the only thing the assembled media was interested in yesterday:
By the time we had to put our cameras away, in the latter portion of practice, the Texans had Deshaun Watson, who didn’t participate in any of the team drills (individual drills only), dressed in a defensive practice jersey playing a stand-in safety position for a walk through drill.
I think of all the highlights that Watson has given us through the years — the playoff win against Buffalo, the kick in the face touchdown against the Raiders, all of the near wins that he engineered and were blown by the porous defense — and when you combine the legal situation he’s put himself in (22 civil lawsuits!) with the visuals from yesterday, where such a once vibrant player is now basically a zombie, it’s just sad.
And when I say “sad,” it’s not Watson that I’m sad for. In many ways, he put himself in the situation he is in, both legally with the 22 plaintiffs and employment-wise with the Texans. No one held a gun to his head to sign the contract extension last fall. No one told him to get super sloppy in booking massage therapists, or to engage in what HE says was consensual acts with some of them.
I’m sad for Houston football fans, who thought that, despite the catastrophic tsunami of suck that was the Bill O’Brien GM Era, they would at least have a franchise quarterback to root for. Now, they don’t even have a return on a trade. They just have the rotting carcass of the Deshaun Watson Era, decomposing right there on Twitter.
Listen to Sean Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. weekdays. Also, follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/SeanTPendergast and like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SeanTPendergast.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2021.
