What trips me up is that never before, in the history of the NFL has a player had this much influence in a trade who wasn't tendered with a franchise tag.
Never had a disgruntled player been able to negotiate the terms of a new contract before his trade.
Never.
I can't imagine why the first player to ever do so would be one with a pending GJ hearing & 22 sexual misconduct civil charges.
& we're OK with it
The Texans traded him on his current contract.
It's not until the Browns have his rights that they "extend" his deal.
The reason it was done this way rather than individual teams is that Watson would have just shot down those trades.
By giving him a pool of teams to choose from and each went about that in different ways - Just look at the contract he ultimately settled on and realize they were bidding against one another.
What Seattle did never would have worked because Watson stated he would nix any deal that made it difficult for his new team to build a winner. You couldn't just deal with one team, you had to sell access to Watson and that's just what they did.
Texans came out of the trade with all they asked for and did so when Watson was hostile towards their getting value. You can't complain about that result.
They bullied the bully.
Telling him give me three teams you'll go to or you don't get traded .... he sits on your cap and collects checks.