At the time, it felt like a risk.
In hindsight, the Cleveland Browns' decision to trade for Deshaun Watson in 2022 has gone down as one of the worst moves in NFL history.
ESPN's Bill Barnwell did a retrospective on some trades in a new article on Thursday, and that's how he described it:
"It's arguably the worst trade in NFL history."
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And there's more.
"Watson has been a disaster on the field for the Browns, missed significant time with shoulder and Achilles injuries, and will likely collect $92 million from the Browns through the end of the 2026 season without ever playing for the team again," Barnwell writes. "The Texans didn't nail all their picks, and they mitigated some of the impact by using a lot of the picks they acquired in a series of trades up the draft board. But avoiding the Watson megadeal and using the move to stock the roster with cost-controlled talent was a huge success, even if the organization had to endure a couple of lean seasons in the process. The Texans probably don't have the draft capital to move up for Will Anderson Jr. in 2023 without this deal, and they landed valuable players in the secondary with the additions of Lassiter and Bullock."
Even at the time, it didn't seem like a sure thing.
"Despite more than two dozen women accusing Watson of sexual assault and inappropriate conduct during massage sessions, there were a number of teams interested in trading for him after he sat out the entire 2021 season," Barnwell writes. "The Browns were initially told that they were out of the running, leaving the Falcons, Panthers and Saints. When the Panthers weren't willing to guarantee four years to Watson, they fell out of the mix, only for the Browns to stunningly return to the table and outbid their competitors by offering Watson a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract."
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The Browns traded the farm, then gave Watson a record contract.
And now he'll almost certainly never take the field for them again.
It's hard to argue for any other deal as worse than this.
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