Other DeShaun Watson - Allegations of Improper Behavior

[Constantgin]

Couldn't help myself

 

[Inspecta Gadget]

Using this metric we should get Calvin Ridley back at half time in week 1

 

[rumply]

Guy on NFL live made the point the previous system was flawed so the NFL set up this new system with Judge Robinson.

Then she uses the previous systems penalties as precedents...

Lol

Sounds like something the AFL would do...

Sporting organisations, go figure

 

[rumply]

 

[Chris25]

Guy on NFL live made the point the previous system was flawed so the NFL set up this new system with Judge Robinson.

Then she uses the previous systems penalties as precedents...

Lol

The system may be new, but the conduct policy she’s ruling on isn’t.

Part of Judge Robinson’s finding appears to be that the NFL are trying to be tougher in reaction to this case, but without having been proactive in making a tougher conduct policy to begin with.

 

[Constantgin]

Love how the nfl want a tougher penalty when kraft got no penalty.

 

[nahnah]

Carry on

 

[trueblue_91]

Great article (as per usual) by Rodger Sherman

Everyone Loses in the Deshaun Watson Ruling but Deshaun Watson

 

[Chris25]

Love how the nfl want a tougher penalty when kraft got no penalty.

I think they’ll ‘appeal’ (hardly an appeal when the guy appealing then makes the decision) and increase it to 10 games (cover some of our harder matches on the schedule) and impose a significant fine.

Then we get to see how long the NFLPA drags it out in court for.

The never ending story. I’ve always said it’s never boring to be a Browns fan.

 

[bgt2110]

"Robinson's decision also requires Watson not have massages other than ones directed by club personnel."

Yep that is a condition imposed as part of his penalty.

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

What a joke. NFL has to appeal.

 

[rumply]

"Robinson's decision also requires Watson not have massages other than ones directed by club personnel."

Yep that is a condition imposed as part of his penalty.

Lol good luck policing that.

 

[rumply]

 

[Brasher]

View attachment 1463774

If you have been punished for something, however lenient, is it still "alleged"?

 

[nobbyiscool]

"Robinson's decision also requires Watson not have massages other than ones directed by club personnel."

Yep that is a condition imposed as part of his penalty.

Isn’t this ridiculous? I started reading the report, but it pissed me off too much.

This is a grown ass man who we have to give conditions to over who he can get massages from - yet each offence was worth less than 1 quarter of football, and not a cent of his $45m. Because a judge doesn’t think cumming a woman against her will crosses the threshold of a violent assault.

There’s no way it can stand despite what the NFLPA & Browns say - they’d know this already, and it makes the NFLPAs statement look idiotic and ill-thought out (as they generally do every time they react immediately and without gauging the response of its members). The backlash has been too swift and too severe, including from normally NFL-friendly media. (Including their own in house media!)

 

[nobbyiscool]

Further to the point I made earlier today:



Around the NFL also mentioned the number of games Josh Gordon was suspended as being 25, which is an ironic number.

25 - the number of women Watson sexually assaulted
25 - 1 more than the number of quarters Watson has been suspended

That said, it’s a lot of words at this stage. Rog still has final say to do what he wants, so it’ll end up being 12 weeks(ish) and a huge “donation” to womens charities trying to avoid court.

If the PA do try and take it to court, the court may not even decide to hear it based on discovery that will include the CBA in which they traded off $ for Rog to keep final say.

 

[drxce]

I agree with all the comments about 6 games being total bullshit however paying a settlement is ridiculously common for cases like this - sports star or not. Do not use that as your reasoning behind hating this decision.

 

[Chris25]

This is a grown ass man who we have to give conditions to over who he can get massages from

I thought that was a strange and unnecessary addition. Like the judge just felt the need to impose some sort of condition in addition to the sentence. Even though I very much doubt Watson needed to be told that.

 

[Inspecta Gadget]

I hope the rub down merchant at the Browns is a big fat bloke

 

[nahnah]

I hope the rub down merchant at the Browns is a big fat bloke

 

[Inspecta Gadget]

 

[nobbyiscool]

At the very least, I want this guy supervising the massages (which I’m sure is the expectation behind the condition that is akin to how you’d treat a creepy kid who learned “pick up” skills from pr0n)


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Exe Gesis]

Response to Deshaun Watson's six-game suspension represents important litmus test for NFL​

Published: Aug 01, 2022 at 10:02 PM

Judy Battista
NFL.com Columnist


On Monday afternoon, a few hours after Judge Sue L. Robinson's decision to suspend Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson for six games was made public, the NFL sent a note to its staff. In it, the NFL assured the staff that it "stands against domestic violence and sexual assault of all forms."
In the next few days, the NFL has a chance to put its actions behind its words.
By Monday evening, the NFL was weighing whether to appeal Robinson's decision -- an appeal would be decided by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or his designee -- a right agreed to by the league and the NFL Players Association in the collective bargaining agreement. The NFL had sought a suspension of at least a year, so allowing the six games to stand without an appeal would undermine the NFL's claims to care about the well-being of women. An increase in the punishment would almost certainly trigger a lawsuit from the players union, a familiar tactic that, in multiple past instances, has resulted in courts reinforcing the power of the commissioner to impose discipline for violations of the personal conduct policy. But a lawsuit would keep Watson's predatory conduct -- Robinson's words -- in the headlines for weeks, when the NFL would certainly prefer the focus to be on football.

None of that is as important, though, as this, from Robinson's ruling: The NFL, she wrote, had proved, "by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Watson engaged in sexual assault (as defined by the NFL) against the four therapists identified in the Report."
Read that again. Watson was a repeat sexual assailant. That makes a six-game suspension mystifying and disheartening, as so much of the behavior by so many people involved in this case has been.
Somewhat incredibly, considering she said Watson's behavior was predatory and amounted to sexual assault, Robinson stressed that there was no violence involved in Watson's assaults, a factor in her decision to settle on six games. That, at best, implies that causing unwanted sexualized contact is not inherently violence against the victim.

The NFL's request for an indefinite suspension of at least a year was rebuffed by Robinson, who settled on six games, because she thought such a lengthy suspension represented a "dramatic shift" in its culture without providing fair notice to players about what was expected from them and what the fallout could be. So Robinson relied on the precedent set by other cases. But there is no analogous case to Watson's, because of the volume of accusations. Robinson was presented with four cases (of the 24 accusations originally made in civil suits). The precedents on which Robinson relied did not have multiple victims, and, perhaps more importantly, some of those precedents were products of a different era, before the recent awakening to violence against and harassment of women that was birthed by the Me Too movement. Jameis Winston, for instance, was suspended three games for inappropriately touching a woman. One woman. Issuing a significantly longer suspension, in a case involving four victims of sexual assault, does not sound like a "dramatic shift."
The NFL's response to Robinson's decision represents an important litmus test for the league, which has not had a case as high-profile and disturbing involving behavior with women since 2014, when Ray Rice was initially suspended for just two games after knocking out his fiancée in a hotel elevator. The league's disastrous handling of that episode of domestic violence -- the subsequent release of a video showing the attack forced the NFL to suspend Rice indefinitely, essentially ending his career -- was one of the lowest moments in the league's history. Robinson cited the Rice case when she noted that the NFL often reacts to public outcry. Of course, so do all businesses.
The approach with Rice revealed a cluelessness and -- worse -- a callousness that the NFL badly needs to prove it has since remedied. Whatever gains have been made by subsequent years of public and private programs about domestic violence and workplace harassment, and all the celebrations of Women's History Month, would largely be erased if the NFL is satisfied with a similar slap on the wrist for Watson.
Watson has given the league ample reason to display its new bona fides. Even as Robinson said this was non-violent sexual conduct, she noted that his pattern of conduct is more egregious than any before reviewed by the NFL. This was not what Watson's lawyer flippantly suggested was just a man looking for a "happy ending" at a massage. This was a pattern of behavior that amounted to sexual assault. Despite that, as Robinson also noted, there has been no public expression of remorse from Watson.

During the fallout from the Rice case, one long-time team owner boiled the situation down for me one day. Why, he wondered, was the NFL going easy on a man who beat a woman? The NFL should come down hard, he said -- and let the players union take up for the abuser if it wished. The NFL, he said, should not be afraid to take up that fight.
Rice and the union did eventually win Rice's reinstatement after he appealed his suspension, though Rice never played again. Robinson cited the arbitrator's decision in the Rice case when arguing that it is unfair to change penalties for conduct after the fact.
But that should not dissuade the NFL from doing everything it can to prove that it really does stand against domestic violence and sexual assault in all forms. Robinson got at least one thing very right in her decision Monday -- the NFL appears to be trying to enact a "dramatic shift" in its culture.
It is long overdue.

 

[drd23]

NFLPA tried so hard to get an independent arbiter for punishment for so long and then they get saddled with having to defend this case to try and set the new precedent. They must be wishing they got something "easier" to defend

 

[Brasher]

NFLPA tried so hard to get an independent arbiter for punishment for so long and then they get saddled with having to defend this case to try and set the new precedent. They must be wishing they got something "easier" to defend

Thing is in establishing a new doctrine they have reset the bar to zero in building precedent. That the Watson penalty is set at 6 games does not set much wiggle room for "lesser" offenses.

And worse still, what sort of offense would now seem appropriate for a punishment in excess of Watson's?

Is a DUI better or worse? What about violence against women or children?

In coming years people will rightly compare and contrast other punishments against this judgement. As it stands today my initial reaction is the judge's sentence suggests Watson's behavior was not good but not that bad which seems a weird outcome.