Goodbye, Falcons

It’s not easy being an NFL fan. To quote Drew Magary, football is a vice. The games themselves can be outstanding. The 2022 NFL Playoffs were some of the best football I’ve ever seen. It was exhilarating. But football is ultimately a violent sport where players wreck their bodies for our entertainment. It may not be as immediately brutal as something like boxing or MMA, but that’s just because the NFL is better at cutting to commercial when a player is hurt.

I’ve been able to square my abhorrence of violence with my love of football by arguing that although the players’ bodies take abuse, they have consented to that choice. Your average NFL player is like any professional who uses their body. We see it wrestling. We see it in ballet. People have an athletic talent and that talent wreaks havoc on the body. But they do it because they love to use their body to express themselves. Football players have athletic gifts that they’ve developed into skills and they consent to endure injury and pain in exchange for financial rewards. They consented to the use of their bodies by their teams. They love the game and are willing to incur the risks. When they are no longer willing to incur the risks, they can leave the game.

Deshaun Watson is the quarterback for the Houston Texans. You didn’t see him on the field in 2021 because he was facing 24 allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct. A criminal case against him was recently brought before a grand jury, but they declined to move forward. The NFL has taken this as a sign that Watson is “cleared” even though 22 civil suits are still moving forward, and you have to labor under the belief that 24 women conspired to share similar stories of harassment and abuse. Perhaps you believe that women behave this way, and that men like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby are similarly the victims of a vast conspiracy even though it takes a great deal of courage for women to come forward and allege abuse at the hands of a man who has far more power and resources than their accusers. If you believe there is a similar conspiracy against Watson, then nothing I say will make sense to you and you may as well move along.

I believe women. I believe these 24 women. Because I believe these women, I cannot cheer for Deshaun Watson. I cannot overlook this infraction. There are QBs that I believe are boneheads, but that’s still a big jump from being an abuser. I think Tom Brady is a doofus, but I don’t think he’s an abuser. I think Aaron Rodgers is an even bigger doofus, but I don’t think he’s an abuser. Everyone has their own line, and I definitely have to draw a line at, “Sexual harassment and abuse.”

But ever since the allegations surfaced, it was not my problem as a Falcons fan. I don’t have to care about all 32 teams equally. I think the NFL should be more willing to blackball a guy who has 24 allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him than a guy who quietly knelt during the national anthem, but I don’t root for the entire NFL. I am not Rob Lowe. I root for the Atlanta Falcons. Or rather, I used to root for the Atlanta Falcons.

Over the past several days, the Falcons have made a push to acquire Watson. Watson is from Gainesville, Georgia and reportedly likes the Falcons as a destination because he wants to “come home.” Other teams, including the Browns and Panthers, were also vying for Watson, but it looks like right now he’s deciding between the Falcons and the New Orleans Saints.

If Watson didn’t have these allegations hanging over him, it would still be a highly questionable move by the Falcons’ front office to acquire him. The amount of draft capital, valuable players, and money the Falcons will have to move to get this one guy will put them in a serious hole for at least the next couple of seasons if not more. This is a full-rebuild kind of move where the strategy seems to be to rebuild the franchise around a young, proven QB like Watson in the hopes of refilling Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is perpetually devoid of fans because the Falcons lose a lot. On paper, you can understand the appeal to the front office. General Manager Terry Fontenot and Head Coach Arthur Smith are both going into their second year, and rather than slowly retooling the roster, Watson would be a player they could build an entire team around even if it means a lot of pain in the short term with the amount they’d have to give up to get him.

Again, allegations aside, I think that’s a monumentally risky proposition. As much attention as QBs get, it’s not enough to simply have a superstar at that position. You need to be able to win in the trenches, and one of the reasons current Falcons QB Matt Ryan1 has had such a rough go of it is because his offensive line can’t block for him and the defensive line can never sack the opposing QB. These are core problems the Falcons are facing and Watson solves neither of them. He may be able to scramble for more yardage than Ryan, but he’s no Lamar Jackson where he’s doing things that no other player could fathom. Watson is a very good quarterback and the Texans still went 4-12 with him in 2020. Blame bad coaching or a weak roster, but I fail to see how slotting him in as the Falcons QB automatically puts your team on a better path than standing pat with Ryan for another year, making smart draft picks at other positions, and having a real plan for a rebuild. Take all of that and then throw in the fact that you allegedly have a serial abuser who could easily offend again, so what does that do to any long-term plans you might have?

But the way the Falcons have rolled out the red carpet for Watson tells me there is no plan, and worse, there is no conscience. “It’s a business,” you reply. “You can’t expect players to be saints.” Can we not agree there is some middle-ground between “saint” and “guy who allegedly harassed and assaulted 24 women?” I was briefly willing to entertain the argument that the Falcons were simply pretending to be into Watson to try and drive the price up on division rivals the Saints and Panthers or that they were making a gesture towards Watson because he shares the same agent with other valuable Falcons players like Kyle Pitts. However, based on the reporting that’s come out over the past day tells me that the Falcons are deadly serious and that if they do miss out on landing Watson, it’s only because the Saints were a more attractive destination based on what they could pay, what they could trade, and their proximity to a championship.

So I tried to tell myself, “Well, I’ll only quit being a Falcons fan if they sign Watson.” But that fails to look at the larger picture. For the Falcons to seriously pursue Watson, it signals to me as a fan that they believe I won’t care about the allegations or that I’m so desperate for a trophy that I’ll overlook or ignore the allegations. And I’ve seen the excitement among some fans, and this is not an indictment of them. We all have our own lines, and I’m not here to pass judgment over fellow fans who are strangers to me. I am here to pass judgment over the behavior of the Falcons’ front office, which believes that I care more about winning than I do about victims of sexual harassment and assault2.

At the start of this article, I talked about how I can accept the way the NFL treats its players because players are consenting to how they use their bodies. The allegations against Watson show that he did not care about consent for the bodies of those women. The allegations show that he did not see those women as individual actors who had the full rights over their bodily autonomy, but rather things that could be plied and when they could not be plied they could be forced.

I’m not going to overlook that because Deshaun Watson is good at football. I don’t see how I can root for this guy to score a touchdown when I know about these 24 women. For others, it may be easier to compartmentalize or rationalize. Being a sports fan is like being part of a tribe, and tribalism is a powerful force in reshaping identity because who wants to lose their tribe? I’ve only been a Falcons fan since the Matt Ryan era because it seemed like a good jumping-on point for a newbie. If you’ve been a Falcons fan for longer or you’ve bought more merchandise or you’re a season ticket holder, then I get that it’s harder to walk away because you’re not just a fan. The Falcons are your community. Are you really going to throw all that away because an exciting young QB had some allegations made against him? After all, they didn’t proceed with a criminal case against him. That makes it okay, right? Right?

Again, everyone has their line. This is mine. I thought I could draw it at a signing, but the fact that the Falcons were even willing to engage rather than simply say, “We believe these women,” or even a meeker, “We can’t really afford this direction for our franchise right now,” tells me that the leadership for this organization is completely adrift. When fall rolls around, I don’t know how I can root for the Falcons knowing that even if they didn’t get Watson, they tried incredibly hard to hire him. They looked at Watson, looked at the allegations, and looked at the fanbase, and came to the conclusion, “People may care about those 24 women, but they care about winning more.” In my case, they miscalculated. I’m out.