Red Zone Play: Bill O’Brien Should Trade Deshaun Watson Now

It’s hard to tell from the outside if Bill O’Brien:

A) Hates Houston Texans fans.

B) Is really as clueless as his detractors have stated for years.

C) Receives a paycheck from Amy Adams Strunk, owner of the Tennessee Titans, to decimate the Texans from the inside.

Or maybe it’s all of the above. If Cal McNair isn’t launching an investigation into this, he’s truly the most clueless and/or apathetic owner in NFL history.

If O’Brien’s going to sit atop NRG playing the violin while the franchise burns, he might as well get rid of Deshaun Watson and J.J. Watt while he’s at it.

The now infamous Herschel Walker trade, where the Minnesota Vikings gave up five players and six draft picks to get Walker from the Cowboys, is often regarded as the worst trade in NFL history.

That is, it was, until Bill O’Brien traded Jadeveon Clowney to the Seattle Seahawks for two waiver wire players he could have signed off the street a few days later and a third round pick he would have gotten as a compensatory selection. Oh, and O’Brien even paid part of Clowney’s salary so JD could take his talent to the Pacific Northwest.

Who does that? It’s like trading your two year old Lexus for a spare tire, dead car battery, and the option to buy another car next year.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, yesterday O’Brien traded away the best receiver in the NFL for the running back equivalent of Barkevious Mingo. Yes, running back. You know, the position O’Brien doesn’t understand how to use in a modern NFL offense. To make matters worse, David Johnson isn’t even a particularly good running back.

After these two mind-numbing moves, it’s very, VERY clear that O’Brien is either incapable of doing what’s right for the Texans or simply wants to destroy the franchise from the inside.

Whether his motives are insidious or incompetent, the outcome is the same.

Even the staunchest O’Brien Kool-Aid Drinkers can’t defend this.

Let’s try to look at the bright side. Yes, I said “try.” Stop laughing. Instead, cry with me, won’t you?

At this point, DeAndre Hopkins now has a chance to play for a team that actually wants to win a championship. The rest of his career will no longer automatically get wasted by Billy-Ball. He can enjoy living in Scottsdale, with many of the sporting world’s elite.

It’s only a matter of time before someone convinces O’Brien to trade away Deshaun Watson. So he might as well get on with it.

Since no one is unaware of O’Brien’s man-crush on Tom Brady, O’Brien should trade Watson to New England—hopefully he can get some magic beans and a 7th round pick in 2025 in return—and then sign Brady to come in and argue with him on the sidelines. While he’s at it, maybe O’Brien can ship J.J. Watt off to Wisconsin for Green Bay’s Kyler Fackrel or Josh Jackson.

While the calls to boycott the team until O’Brien is shown the door haven’t reached fever pitch just yet, they’re coming. Petitions.net already has a new “Fire Bill O’Brien” page going. Odds are, if it weren’t for the COVID-19 concerns, even more people would be asking if B’OB could be quarantined to the the Isle of Elba. In fact, if you search Facebook for the word string “Fire Billm” it comes back with pages of people calling for O’Brien’s immediate departure from H-Town.

When fans of rival teams are coming to BRB to share their sympathy with Texans fans for enduring this lunacy, you know there’s something really, really wrong.

Hopefully, if Cal McNair truly doesn’t care, O’Brien will liberate Watson and Watt soon so they can spend the rest of their careers working for a team that cares more about winning than the head coach/general manager’s feelings.

Watson had a glorious high school career. He then took the NCAA by storm at Clemson, eventually winning a National Championship by beating Alabama, the best college team of the last generation. That success stops here as long as O’Brien is in charge.

If nothing else, Watson should be instructing his agent to reject any and all offers from Houston at this point. The writing on the wall over the gates of NRG Stadium is plain for all to see:

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

#FreeWatson

#CalMcNairDontCare