Deshaun Watson is sitting behind the wheel of a red Ferrari on a track named Circuit Tazio Nuvolari, near Milan, Italy. He is wearing black, ripped jeans and an oversized white tee with a large, multicolored depiction of Malcolm X. One of the chains resting around his neck — 815 — stops just short of the seatbelt, and a glistening wristwatch rests on his left hand, gingerly adjusting the seat. Most Ferrari drivers aren’t 6 feet 2 inches tall, after all.
Someone is peering in through the car’s passenger seat window, where a balding man in a Ferrari zip-up sits with sunglasses perched on his head.
“Put your hands here,” the passenger instructs, as if gently nurturing a concussed teenager through their third doomed attempt at a driver’s license. Watson complies, grabbing the wheel with both hands, proving his competence.
“You know how it works, right?” chimes the steely-eyed man from the window.
“Yeah?” asks the man in the Ferrari zip-up, turning to face the driver’s side.
Watson pauses for a moment and curls his right hand, drawing his fingers together in a supremely Italian point. Wrinkles form on the forehead of the man looking through the window.
“Is this automatic, where it changes by itself, or do you want me to change it?” His hands converge, then turn inwards, fingers pressing the Malcolm X figure emblazoned across his chest.
The two men stare back. The eyes looking in from the window widen.
“You change,” exhorts the man in the Ferrari zip-up.
“Ooh,” the driver responds, grazing over his chain. The man in the window smiles.
Watson brings his hands together.
“Alright, alright.”
The onslaught from above assaults the dark, rocky terrain with coarse, bitter grains of sand. A football hourglass has broken here, above this bleak, desolate landscape, where falling sand piles in mounds strewn about the cold, vast expanse. This is the land of the discarded — where fallen stars call home.
This particular star, like most in view, was not supposed to land here. But it is here, bound by the pull of the “can-do-wrong” orbit, from where Deshaun Watson has been ejected, spun out of control, and crashed. Over two dozen allegations of sexual misconduct have turned a former legend into a pariah, light to darkness, and hope to horror. From 2017 to 2021, the Houston Texans’ quarterback was among the brightest new faces of professional football. Today, he is a near outcast, banished to the fringes of a league he once propelled, languishing in the doldrums of Cleveland, where fans wave from a comfortable distance and parents grasp their children’s hands a little tighter when they walk past. He is desperately trying to save a career that, with each passing minute, appears to be screeching toward finality.
The end may be unfinished, but the story begins in Gainesville, Georgia — the town almost obliterated, not once, but twice, each time in uniquely, Biblically terrifying scenes. There was the gold rush and the frenzy that ensued. In 1851, people filled the streets and stores, libraries, schools, dance halls, and nurseries. The Methodist Church was introduced, and a mineral springs resort. Then came the flames, catching on bits of leaves and grass, evolving, with wrath, into billowing waves of fire and torrents of smoke, barrelling upon the town and nearly engulfing everything in its wake.
Yet, by 1995, it was not fire that had most recently tested the town’s resolve but wind. Strong gusts of wind that, in 1936, turned into a pair of tornadoes, which synchronized then turned on Gainesville, mercilessly fanning the leftovers of a once-rebuilt town, 80 years after it almost burned down.
Drive down to Gainesville, to 815 Harrison Square, and find where Deshaun Watson was forged from a town that refused to expire. Drive farther and pass the road named Deshaun Watson Way, that leads up to a high school. It looks like they’re leaning into the irony at this point.
Think: the Norm MacDonald joke about how Bill Cosby really messed up by being a hypocrite but in a pernicious manner. It’s the sinking feeling in your stomach when you learn it was actually young Deshaun who brought home the Habitat for Humanity flyer that got his family a furnished house co-signed by an NFL player. In a sense, it’s the feeling of how maybe, just maybe, an impoverished kid might have fallen for that childish yet captivating belief that in those three letters, and his proximity to them, could lie everything in the world and all the impunity to match — all for the taking.
Perhaps it’s the feeling one might get reading through hollow-smiled social media posts depicting a man earning $230 million in “absolutely-you-got-it-guaranteed” salary doing charitable side quests around the city. If this really is just for charity, you ask, then why keep telling us about it?
Some will point back to Clemson, back when Deshaun Watson wanted to wear No. 4, only it was retired for Steve Fuller. So, his coach, Dabo Swinney, asked Fuller if Deshaun could wear the number. Fuller looks at Dabo Swinney, so goes the story, looks at him, tells Dabo Swinney that he trusts him, and asks if he is a “great kid.”
“He is an unbelievable kid,” replied Dabo Swinney.
A decade or so later, the “unbelievable kid” is standing in the pocket during a Week 7 game in Cleveland. The Browns are 1-5. The pocket is clean, and the kid, paying no mind to mechanics, drops back, sticking his back leg into the ground in the way only Lamar Jackson can, in the same way the kid, once unbelievable, once could. Today, it looks half-hearted — an almost lazy drop back — but once upon a time, it was a ploy, a trick to lull the defensive line in, before the kid dashed up the middle, juked past a safety, and outran the entire defense, or lingered behind the line of scrimmage and fired a laser strike into the heart of a backpedaling secondary.
Today, the “unbelievable kid” has grown into a man of disappointment, and the expectations from years past are no more. The cherry on top, perhaps, is how he explained it all away in a pithy interview in the middle of a nondescript hallway, swaying from side to side before managing to mutter, “sorry to all the women,” for whatever that was worth.
Football in hand, he jolts forward, plant leg bearing the weight of a man looking to escape. Almost instantly, his ACL gives way. He stumbles, limping forward as if shot, making it a yard, maybe two, and before he crumples into a heap. A cart rolls on to the field to pick up the $230 million man and take him away. The home crowd cheers. The man sits on the back in a brown jersey with a towel shrouding his head. The crowd is cheering. He is sobbing.
The man of disappointment is no longer in control. Cleveland has guaranteed the contract, but his future, once carefully cultivated, sits hazily and has never looked bleaker. His legs have weakened, his abilities have lessened, his name has fallen, and in place of the capacity for leadership now rests the hollow shell of a dynamic, vibrant, superstar athlete that no longer exists, exposed in court, in testimony, and in character. Money is still owed, and as long as it is, his abilities can be expected to remain contracted. But, in time, the money will be paid, the graces will expire, and like the wind, the saga of Deshaun Watson — which once promised to linger forever — will now depart as fast as it once came.
Houston Texans quarterback coach Quincy Avery is watching, half-concernedly and half-amusedly, as the red Ferrari barrels down the path. It is 2019, and the “unbelievable kid” behind its wheel is ready to take over the football world. Having just fallen short in a playoff duel with Patrick Mahomes, he will receive a kingly contract next year and with it, rise to the rare upper echelon of unquestionable franchise leaders, solidifying Deshaun Watson as the face of a city. From Gainesville to Houston, he will be a leader of men, quarterbacking the Texans for several seasons, putting up thrilling numbers, and, if all goes to plan, he will bring home the first Super Bowl trophy in franchise history.
Quincy Avery looks through the fence toward the track. The red Ferrari is coming into view now.
“Doesn’t scream someone who’s got a whole bunch of skills behind a wheel,” he chuckles.
“And that also is the case back in Houston. He really cannot drive.”
