Yahoo Finance Report: Texans telling teams they're not trading Deshaun Watson
The football world is waiting to see if the Houston Texans will trade their star quarterback, Deshaun Watson. After the Texans’ recent 4-12 season that saw head coach and general manager Bill O’Brien get the boot, paired with team owner Cal McNair apparently ignoring Watson’s opinions on who should be the new GM, Watson has reportedly been unhappy and asked the team to trade him somewhere else.
But no matter how much Watson wants to be traded, the Texans don’t have to do anything. They could keep Watson and he’d have no choice but to play for Houston. And it looks like that’s what’s happening.
Texans standing firm on Watson
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Texans have been getting a lot of interest from teams who may want to acquire Watson, but they’ve been telling all of them that they have no plans to trade him.
Some of them they’re not even bothering to tell. Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reported that the Texans haven’t even been returning some calls and text messages about Watson, and that any team that does get through to GM Nick Caserio has been “firmly” told that they Watson isn’t available.
Teams that have spoken with Caserio have reportedly gotten the impression that the Texans are trying to repair their broken relationship with Watson before resorting to a trade.
Players unhappy with personnel changes?
If the Texans are trying to repair their relationship with Watson — not to mention keep other players like JJ Watt happy — they’re not doing a great job of it so far. Schefter reported that the Texans have recently fired equipment manager Mike Parson and his staff, as well as director of football administration Kevin Krajcovic and longtime employee Doug West.
According to Schefter, all of these changes haven’t gone over well with players, but the dismissal of Parson stands out. Parson apparently had a close relationship with Watson, so now the organization may have made their unhappy quarterback even unhappier, along with a number of other players as well.
Why do this? One anonymous player who spoke to Schefter had a theory.
One player privately commented to ESPN that the Texans are weeding out employees who were not hired by executive vice president Jack Easterby and new general manager Nick Caserio, replacing them with employees who will be indebted to them for their work.
Jack Easterby and his lack of real football experience (until 2019 his only NFL jobs had been as team chaplain or character coach) has been widely criticized, especially since he’s seen as having a lot of influence over McNair, but McNair has repeatedly stood by Easterby.
You have to wonder how serious the Texans are about repairing their relationship with Watson. Thus far, their strategy has been to do things that make him unhappy. That’s obviously not going to work, unless they don’t actually care about restoring that trust. In which case, they’re doing just fine.
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