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Texans Added As Defendant in Deshaun Watson Litigation

Just when you thought the Texans were done with the Watson saga.

Houston Texans v Miami Dolphins
A true leader. /s
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

If you have already read the New York Times article about Deshaun Watson and their review of the legal documents and testimony in the case, then you know that it does not make for light or even happy reading.

If you haven’t, then you might not understand why the Texans are getting dragged back into the Watson controversy. Because according to Aaron Wilson, that’s exactly what’s going on with the Texans.

According to Wilson’s report, Tony Buzbee, the attorney representing the massage therapists that Deshaun Watson is accused of sexually assaulting in 24 civil suits, has added the Houston Texans as a co-defendant in the action.

Buzbee is accusing the Texans of being “well aware of his issues and failing to act.”

This comes on the heels of the NYT article stating that the Texans not only gave him membership to The Houstonian, an upscale hotel and club where several of the incidents allegedly happened, and gave Watson multiple non-disclosure agreements to give to the therapists to sign for his appointments.

Not terribly hard to see how the Texans could be considered complicit in Watson’s alleged acts, given that information.

What sticks with me in all this is the NDAs. None of it is good, and I know if you’re a massive billion dollar enterprise like the Texans, you’re going to want to get ahead of things like this. It’s the legally correct, though not necessarily right, course of action. But then you remember all the talk that Bob McNair, and to a certain extent, Cal made about running a first class organization and (unrelatedly) the time that three Texans were cut for smoking weed and missing practice because it was a bad example; then you think about the Texans, allegedly, giving Watson an NDA so he can go out and, allegedly, harass a massage therapist for more than just therapy.

It’s gross, and it really makes it difficult to want to support this team, sometimes.

I better cut it there before I start getting into how I really feel about this and I don’t need that kind of heat in my life. So why don’t y’all get the conversation started, instead.