RIP BOZO
Ah, how the wind changes. One Wednesday you make a comic about how the Browns are in hell, and the following Wednesday you make a comic about how happy everyone is. Did I kill Deshaun Watson by Draw Play cursing him? I’ll take the credit if no one else will. That comic actually will go down as possibly the actual, legitimate lowest point in New Browns history. After Sunday the light was seen once more.
Pretty much since the trade one of the most common phrases uttered around fandom circles regarding Deshaun Watson was thus: “I don’t cheer for injuries, but….“. Pretty sure I saw it many times in my own comments here. I don’t know if I ever said it, but I did know that if Watson went down I would not cry about it. When the moment came, I did not cheer, and I did not cry. I did laugh. Quite hard. My dog was confused as to why I was laughing so hard. I may have woken my neighbor’s newborn child when I realized the injury was quite serious on replay and loudly exclaimed “Oh Wow!” to my backyard. I then took another sip of Arizona Green Tea and laughed.
As it turns out much of the football world cheered, and that included some of the Browns fans in First Energy Stadium. Since the injury the cheering has become the debate du jour, because some people are really opposed to the idea of cheering for injury. The rest of us know who Deshaun Watson is. Like I said, I do not cheer for injury, I will likely never cheer for injury, but I have nothing against those who did, because of who that injury was to. Fuck Deshaun Watson. I’m glad his Achilles snapped after he spent half a season embarassing himself with some of the worst QB play in history. He’s a piece of shit and it warms my heart to know that while he was lying there on the field his entire stadium was raining cheers. I hope he thinks about it during every rehab session when a contractually obligated team-appointed male doctor works on his leg. I hope the cheers ring in his brain during every date he manages to get for the rest of his life. I hope, though I doubt it will as he’s shown no remorse as of yet, that it generates some sort of change and growth within him, and he becomes a better person.
The big cause of the discourse this time was two teammates. First was Myles Garrett, who basically came out and said the general expected response to such an event: cheering for injuries is sad, blah blah blah, we gotta be better than that, etc etc. Boilerplate teammate defending, tbh. Then, as if he wanted to get thrown under a bus, he called Deshaun a “Model Citizen through college and “most of the pros”. Most of the pros. Most of. I’m not sure the word “most” has ever been so load-bearing in history. The word Most in that sentence squats twice as much as anything Jalen Hurts has ever done.
I really can’t blame a player for defending a teammate or saying cheering for injuries is shitty, Watson or no. That’s kinda what you have to do. I’d have been more shocked if a Browns player came out like “yeah fuck that guy”. No matter what his teammates think of him defense was always the plan. But to go out of your way to call him a model citizen? for MOST of the pros? It shows you Garrett fully understands why the people are booing and said it anyway.
The much funnier defense came from Jameis Winston. Jameis got interviewed in the locker room and spat out the most Jameis Winston ass statement you could imagine. You could tell this motherfucker thought he was dropping some righteous truth with how he was enunciating every word with his big serious face. If this interview had been from any other player, about any other player, this would have been a killer promo. Instead it’s a sexual predator going to bat for a bigger sexual predator. It’s so funny to see Jameis go “THIS MAN HAS HAD THE ENTIRE WORLD AGAINST HIM FOR THE PAST 4 YEARS” like lmao my dude…why? Why has the world been against him for the past 4 years? As one of my followers made into a meme:
WHY, JAMEIS? WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE HIM? WHY ARE ALL OF YOU SO VAGUE WITH YOUR DESCRIPTIONS? SEEMS FISHY TO ME. I’d tell you to uber your drunk ass home Winston but I don’t think you’re allowed in Ubers anymore.
Fans can cheer his demise as much as they want. They didn’t sign him. They are allowed to be disgusted by his personal behaviors and his poor play. Don’t hold the contingent of cheering fans to higher moral standards than you hold Deshaun Watson. To get the kind of reaction this injury has generated, you gotta earn that kind of hate. It is extremely telling how none of the defenses of Watson or criticisms of the cheering ever seem to go into details about why people are cheering his demise. They all skirt around the actual reason why so many people were happy to see him suffer. Watson isn’t just a bad player that the fans were sick of and wanted benched. He’s worse than that, and every discussion of the cheers and boos should be required to bring it up. Watson was accused of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women. THAT’S WHY PEOPLE CHEERED. FUCKING SAY IT.
So from here out we have Predator 2 under center (Hydra Update coming this weekend!) and a wildcard of a team that is now starting fresh with Chubb back. Jameis at least good at giving his effort every play even when that effort is disaster so I expect the Browns to become far more entertaining. I don’t know if Watson will start a game for Cleveland ever again, but I think it’s strange how this moment is being treated like the de-facto end. He’s not going anywhere for two more years, if the Browns don’t pick up a new signal caller this offseason we might be back in this same situation a year from now.
I mean geez, when you tally up every minute of Deshaun Watson’s life, the amount of them he spent sexually harassing women is a statistical drop in the bucket! There’s roughly four billion women on this planet he hasn’t gotten around to harassing yet, why can’t people cut him some slack? Let he who hasn’t had 24 civil lawsuits for sexual misconduct throw the first stone.
I feel that you did the Yautja species a dirty, by comparing Watson to them. lol
God made the tackle on that play
“You shouldn’t cheer for injuries, it’s not moral!” Screams the guy who tried to brain a dude with his own fucking helmet.
Has very big energy from that earl thomas comic you did a while back “Let he among us who hasn’t been unfaithful by having an orgy and then being held at gunpoint cast the first stone”
The closest comparison to Deshaun Watson is Michael Vick.
Michael Vick committed crimes that was and still are unforgiveable, but he admitted his crimes and accepted the consequences of his actions and lobbied for legislation to strengthen the same laws he broke. Additionally, when he returned to the NFL he accepted contracts that was far below what his abilities demanded and he did put forth his best effort in the twilight of his career.
Deshaun Watson is accused of crimes that he settled out of court. While he is Innocent Until Proven Guilty, to my knowledge, he has taken no effort to use his celebrity status in support of victims of the same crimes he is accused of. Additionally, he forced an unheard-of contract of Guaranteed Money that other players who has had success and performance far greater than his would even consider asking for. And when he did play, his performance was selfish and was mostly centered around him not looking bad instead of trying to lead his team to victory.
tl;dr Deshaun Watson and Michael Vick are both a**holes, but at least Vick recognizes it, can read a room and at least trying to become less of one.
Watson is worse than Vick and Big Ben COMBINED. Hell, You could even make an argument that Aaron Hernandez was a better person than Watson. His mental issues obviously didn’t justify him being a murderer. But I think Hernandez’s mental health is more of a mitigating factor in those murders than Watson’s mental health is in the sex assault cases
Also, yeah. Fuck Michael Vick for what he did. But he has put in more effort to bettering himself than most people do in situations like this
Vick was also a product of his situation.
What he did was wrong, and he recognized that. He made no excuses for his decisions. But he also recognized that he was surrounded by the wrong people, and that the laws were completely ineffective or non-existent.
Big Ben never really acted like he had done anything wrong. More like “Oops. Sorry you almost stepped into the rape I spilled on the floor. Want me to buy you some shoes?”
Yeah I agree. Vick and Watson have different situations and crimes. Vick actually suffered meaningful consequences and changed as a person while attempting to help for the future. Watson thinks he did nothing wrong and suffered a half-season suspension at worst. He’s not even donating any of his salary to women’s organizations or making any effort to change his PR. Ben and the various other types like him (say, Tyreek Hill or Kareem Hunt) are much better comparisons
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY is for empaneled juries in criminal trials. It irks me when people act like this is some kind of universal standard that applies outside of the courtroom. Watson is guilty AF, and we’re under no obligation, legal, moral, or otherwise to pretend he isn’t. fuckim
And people like you and me presumably have zero influence over any possibly time spent in jail so us saying that guy is guilty has no bearing on anything really. So people screaming about supposed “innocent until proven guilty” can bite me
While I agree that Watson is 100% guilty and no one has to oblige by “Innocent until proven guilty”. To say that public opinion doesn’t have any bearing on people is just not correct. People sometimes get accused of stuff they didn’t. Public opinion can change into mob justice which could result in ugly results.
Again, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t accuse Watson because no law abiding citizen gets unjustly accused by 20+ women but there were some bad cases.
Particularly concerning cases of sexual assault and abuse: the amount of false accusations brought into court are pretty limited as a percentage of overall events. What’s worse is the amount of accusations that are never brought forward because people see high profile cases like this one where you have TONS of people immediately discrediting you, assuming all of the worst kinds of things, blindly propping up your abuser, etc. Unfortunately the whole “innocent until proven guilty” portion means that while statistically SA should be prosecuted more, our justice system (and society in general, quite frankly) just isn’t equipped to adequately deal with it.
I just wanna point out that the two players who are shaming people who are cheering Watson’s professional include one who bashed a quarterback’s head a helmet in a fit of murderous rage and one who also had an open sexual abuse case against him. The Browns are just a hive of terrible people at this point.
I saw that pictured and wondered when the Cleveland Browns signed Worf.
I would give everything just to see one reporter risk it all by asking someone on the Browns “Why don’t people like Deshaun?” and watch them squirm. I know they would never good that because that would be as good as burning their press clearance card but I would still love to see it.
Okay, that made me laugh…
I think it gets lost in the shuffle but
“we don’t cheer for injuries” is a moral statement about not wishing someone gets real-hurt for the sake of a fake game.
We don’t cheer when our team’s chance to win goes up astronomically because the star player on the other team got hurt. That’s putting game outcome ahead of a real person, and that’s not acceptable.
We can still cheer when bad people have bad things happen to them, nothing wrong with that
I don’t like the “don’t cheer for injuries” line. I prefer to say I don’t “root for” or “hope for” injuries. Because there are plenty of injuries that I don’t feel bad about and think are hilarious after the fact, and I’m not going to apologize for schadenfreude.
The ripple effects of Baker playing through injury in 2021 instead of being given time to heal have been wild. I would imagine Baker would’ve objected to being told to rest, but he might be cruising to his best stats as a Brown instead of a Buc right now. Hopefully he likes Florida.
I just think it’s crazy how after breaking the rookie TD record and leading the Browns to there best season (with a Playoff win and almost two), they decided to not extend him BUT give the most guaranteed money and largest contract ever to Watson. I know Baker was very high or low but he is still a major upgrade and I’m so happy he is balling out.
Watching that tendon POP was pure bliss. Sue me.
Also great was him sucking prior to that. Hopefully, he never gets a chance to improve on his awful stats.
Stop. Hiring. Rapists.
“States rights to do what Jameis?”
Yeah, I think RPG Archer is on the right track. The principle of “Don’t cheer for injuries” is normally for when the injured guy is good at football and the person cheering is thinking “Wow, now my team will have a better shot of winning that game against his team!” or “Wow, now we can win the division standings!” A guy’s short-term (and sometimes long-term) health is bigger than the game, so thinking about the game over his health is a dick move.
But in this case, people’s main grievances against Watson are ALSO bigger than the game. It’s about, y’know, wanting women to be treated respectfully and for people to not sexually assault other people.
Personally, I feel like the health stuff and the moral stuff don’t FULLY balance each other out. Like, it’d probably be better if Watson was uninjured, unemployed, and in jail awaiting trial instead of where he is now (injured, but rich and able to dodge criminal charges). But here we are. This is probably the biggest comeuppance Watson will face for what he did, and therefore probably the closest you could get to justifying “celebrating” an injury.
I really like what Nick Wright said about the matter. It boiled down to “If Watson was accused of abusing any other demographic, he wouldn’t have nearly this amount of defense. If it was children or men, nobody would be standing by Watson”. There’s a LOT of internalized misogyny in modern society that builds these kind of ridiculous double standards. I hope by the time I have a daughter we’ve made more progress than this.
If it was men, there would absolutely 100% be losers standing by him. Possibly more.