From Joe Kwan (@JoeKwan03683425):
Joe, it’s a fair question. Watson will have gone 700 days between regular-season snaps when he breaks the huddle for the first time in Houston on Sunday after serving an 11-game suspension after extensive legal troubles over the past year, including more than two dozen filings detailing graphic accounts of sexual harassment and assault.
There’s a parallel here that I think can help illustrate the challenge ahead for Watson on the field. After the 2000 college season, then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner backed up the Brinks truck to pry prized prospect Drew Henson from his football pursuits. To that point, Henson had juggled being a Michigan quarterback (for two years, famously, as Tom Brady’s backup, and a third as starter) and a minor-league third baseman. The terms of Henson’s six-year, $17 million deal with the Yankees—signed in March 2021—dictated he drop the two-sport shuttle and focus solely on baseball.
Henson had played well enough as a junior at Michigan to have some believing, at the time, that he could be the No. 1 pick in the 2002 draft—after his senior year in Ann Arbor—and that was part of what he was giving up in taking the deal with the Yankees. The Cowboys took a flier on him in ’03, using a sixth-round pick to grab his rights, and then, sure enough, the Yankees soured on a slumping Henson, and he retired from baseball in ’03.
So Dallas got Henson in 2004. But it didn't get the Henson who played for Michigan on New Year’s Day in ’01. It got a guy whose timing was off, whose mechanics weren’t the same and who wasn’t playing with near the rhythm he needed to execute. And even more difficult, where most rookies are doing all they can just to acclimate to the speed and violence of pro football, Henson was doing that trying to get all those elements of his game back.
Now it won’t be as hard for Watson because he’s played four years in the NFL already. But it wouldn’t be shocking if there was a reacclimation period he needs to get himself up to speed playing NFL football. Which is why the next six weeks are important for the Browns, regardless of whether they can get themselves back in the AFC playoff race.
