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With yesterday’s surprising info that Deshaun Watson not only dodged (for the moment) the NFL Commissioner’s Exempt List, but he showed up for Houston Texans training camp, lots of people are talking Watson again.
Chris Mortensen dropped this one for all to see:
For Deshaun Watson, the @Texans price has been some combination of 5 high draft picks and starting caliber players, per two league executives.
— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) July 26, 2021
This comes hot on the heals of a comment from a major member of Watson’s camp, expecting the QB would have been traded by yesterday.
Deshaun Watson’s personal QB coach @Quincy_Avery predicted Friday, while taping the Adam Schefter Podcast, that his client would be traded by Sunday. As in yesterday. pic.twitter.com/ZrRwta5op7
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 26, 2021
But wait, there’s more:
I think there are two ways to look at it. One is them sending a message to the QB that they tried to trade him and could not get fair compensation. The second is they think the legal issues are more complicated and they would rather try to trade now. https://t.co/e7SnA4NhUH
— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) July 26, 2021
With rumors swirling that the Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins are still very interested in Watson, something could break at any time.
Any general manager interested would have to weight the most likely worst case scenario: you give up five key assets to acquire Watson knowing you may lose him for a full year or more.
As hard as it is to get a QB of Watson’s stature, surely there’s a few teams who think that potential tradeoff makes sense all day, every day.