I don’t think Texans GM Nick Caserio is going to panictrade Deshaun Watson. At this point, Houston’s carried Watson on its roster for three months with Watson coming into the building for work without really being a member of the team. So it’s not like the awkwardness is going to suddenly shake anyone there. And Caserio also has to know that there’d be football reasons for waiting until January or February. One would be that any further clarity from the legal system or the league could boost Watson’s trade value (though there’s risk it could go the other way too). Another would be that the Texans would know where the 2022 picks they get in return are going to be in the draft order. Third, there’d almost certainly be more suitors then than there are now, since some teams that don’t necessarily need a quarterback right now might decide to look for an upgrade (Giants? Browns? Saints? Steelers?), like the Niners and Rams did last winter. So I’d expect that Caserio will hold interested teams to his price (three first-rounders, plus additional picks and/or players), mostly because Caserio knows this will likely become the defining move of his time in Houston. A few other things to keep in mind …
• Ownership will play a role on the buyer side. For some teams, the allegations of sexual misconduct make a Watson trade a non-starter. But other teams have owners who are consumed with finding a franchise quarterback (I’d put the Panthers in that category), to the point where the owner could drive a trade for Watson.
• Ownership could play a role on the seller side too. My understanding is that both sides view the relationship between Texans owner Cal McNair and Watson as irreparable. It’s certainly possible now that McNair would nudge Caserio to turn over every rock on a potential pre-deadline trade, because he just wants it to be over with.
• As we wrote in Friday’s GamePlan, the league has been vague with teams (and specifically owners) on whether it would move to put Watson on the exempt list if he’s traded. That, of course, doesn’t mean it will happen. It’s just been a factor in the pace of talks.
• I’ve had people in the Texans’ building tell me Watson has handled the situation very professionally the last three months—I even had David Culley say that to me a few weeks ago. That’s obviously made the situation more palatable for people working there, and might make another team feel more comfortable trading for him.
So we’ll see what happens. We’ve got eight days until the trade deadline, and there’s a league meeting in New York this week (we’ll get into that more in a bit), which will put some of the key players in this together in one place. And one last thing, and I’ve said this a bunch: I don’t want to minimize the seriousness of the allegations here, nor do I think it’s fair to convict Watson here, either. I think it’s important that we all let the legal piece of this play out. And as for whether Watson gets back on the field while that’s still ongoing? We should know more within about a week.