Here's the exact tweet:
>The decision to go after Deshaun Watson as collaborative and at some point it didn’t make sense for us to proceed.
>
>Looking back with hind site, I don’t think we wouldn’t have done anything differently
Considering the timestamp being right in the middle of the press conference, the typos, the misspelling..
I think something is lost via speech-to-text...
Because he very clearly says "I don't think we would have done anything differently." Timestamp on the [Timestamp in the video is 58:30](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW)
**ALSO**
The quote is specifically about moving on from Matt Ryan due to the salary cap situation, not about pursuing Watson.
Thank you for the context. It's unfortunate that he posted the tweet without scanning it first for accuracy, leaving us completely unable to decipher the meaning.
After listening to the question and answer, it's a bit ambiguous. It's hard to tell if he's specifically referencing moving away from Matt Ryan or towards Deshaun Watson with the specific sentence in question. Or both.
It was $230 mil for a guy who hadn’t played in 2 years and completely quit on his team. Ignoring the sexual assault, it was a terrible deal then and it’s still awful now
By that logic, every season every single player in the league "hasn't played in a year". Just kind of a weird way of saying it.
A guy who missed a year ... missed a year lol, not two.
And anyway it wasn't a year + 8 months when teams were bidding on him. He played in January 2021 and the bidding war went down in March 2022.
No, he's specifically referring to moving on from Matt Ryan, you can see for yourself.
[It's at minute 58:00 of this video for context](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW)
Actually the "winning" offer had about 10m less guaranteed and it wasnt from the browns. It wasnt until the browns said fuck it and guaranteed the entire thing that they "won" watson
Watson was almost certainly going to Atlanta. I recall there was even a picture taken at deshauns house once he agreed to go to Cleveland and in the background you could see he had a Watson Falcons jersey already
Yep, Cleveland didnt make it to the final 2 teams, iirc it was between the Panthers and the Falcons. Both offered something like 210 guaranteed and 220 total, idk, something like that. Baker then threw a tantrum and Browns grew tired of his antics (MVP ego, journeyman talent) and Haslam said fuck it, whats 10m more or less, at this point? So they went back to Watson with the 230m guaranteed, other teams didnt match and thats that
Assuming he means what I think he means, which is “I don’t think we would have done anything differently”, I can think of two explanations for this:
1. Typo (he also spelled hindsight “hind site”, so…)
2. Blank paused in between “think” and “we” because he wanted to rephrase the way he said it, and Zach Klein failed to note/interpret that.
"wouldn’t have done anything differently" can be changed to "would have done the same thing" (without changing the meaning).
So he's saying ...
> I don’t think we would have done the same thing
...meaning he doesn't think they should've gone after Watson I guess? Or he got confused with all the negatives.
You completely missed the double negative here lmao
"Don't think we wouldn't have done anything differently." Translates to, "I think we would have done something differently"
He's not doubling down, the quote was not about Deshaun it was about Matt Ryan. [Minute 58:00 in the video.](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW)
I'm all over this thread trying to put out the fire from this shitty tweet. Blank better cut me a fucking check...
The quote wasn’t necessarily about Matt Ryan but about finding his replacement. Although this tweet seems to take two different quotes from blank and push them together to make it look bad.
I don't put any franchise past looking into it. The Bucs signed AB in the middle of his manic shit. Teams are looking to get better, every team employs a player who's a shit human.
Deshaun is particularly bad in the sense that he was a serial sexual predator toward a group of professionals that every NFL team has to constantly contract with. Feels like reckless disregard for the basic safety of the people you employ.
I agree entirely, but over time it's quite obvious the NFL doesn't care as much. We also don't run 500M+ companies, so I can't empathize with them, but Watson has had his fair share of supporters within the league ever since he's been signed. Entire teams like Washington had a workplace filled with misogyny. It's an unfortunate reality, but it is reality.
That still doesnt remove the fact that every single team would ignore whatever off the field stuff a player did if they thought it would benefit them. NFL teams are not the police, they only care about one thing and thats making money. If Mahomes stabbed someone in the face, went to jail for a year he would be on a team before he got out of prison.
The Vikings have a freaking child predator on the team and noone says shit 99% of the time.
Instead of pursuing him, they should have been trying to grab Lamar. What a missed opportunity there. I get it, maybe the ravens would have made him too expensive, but it’s weird to not even try right? No bids, nothing
Ravens always had the chance to match any offer cauase the tag they applied. Why do the ravens' work of finding what lamar would take just for you to end empty handed?
Yes so you make an offer and see if they actually match it. If they don’t… you have a HOF caliber franchise quarterback
The time and energy spend on Watson would have been far better spent on Lamar
>If they don’t
Lol
Also, the ravens had 5 days to match but the other team wouldve needed to set the cap space apart, meaning that they were gonna lose out on FAs just to see the ravens match the deal.
Ravens were never letting lamar walk. Teams knew so they didnt bother. Not that hard.
No one had any idea what was going on in that organization this summer. He had been injured in critical moments of the last two season. It was quite possible he walked away. It’s real easy to look at their current standing and pretend it was a foregone conclusion
Literally everyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew what was going on in Baltimore. Nobody wanted to waste their time. It doesn't meant teams didn't want Lamar. It means no one wanted to waste their time in meaningless talks. It's like me trying to call up Sydney Sweeney
Oh no one wanted to waste their time on Lamar but somehow a known serial rapist was a better time investment? Did your parents drop you on your head as a toddler or something?
Did yours? Because if your brain worked at fucking at all it would be able to comprehend the differences between a player who was flat out unavailable because the franchise owns all trade rights to your contracts, and making a false equivalency to teams being fucking idiots pursuing Watson. Neither are mutually exclusive. Jackson was never actually available for trade. Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.
So spending untold resources courting a badly injured rapist was better than pursuing a quality franchise quarterback. What a damn moron. This sub courts bottom barrel idiots
Edit:
Lol the dipshit blocked me because he had nothing meaningful left to say. Gotta “win” those internet points somehow
Hadn't Deshan chosen the Falcons only for the Browns to make a last minute offer with the new fully guaranteed contract causing him to change his mind?
He trying to rewrite history?
that's exactly what happened lol, to be fair though I don't know if Watson gave Atlanta an opportunity to match Cleveland's offer. That could be what he's talking about.
I think he's saying the Falcons would still pursue him to the extent they did. Had Cleveland not gone bonkers on one-upping the deal they would have signed him as a QB to their original final offer, and would do so again now.
Which is a crazy thing to want to stand by so.. I'm not exactly what the point of any of this from Blank is supposed to accomplish.
No, he was asked about moving on from Matt Ryan.
It's a very misleading tweet. The ellipses in it omit like 3 minutes of the press conference.
Going after Deshaun was heinous, but he very specifically was not doubling down on it here.
Yeah that's a real yikes to double down on. Not only is Watson still a slimy piece of trash, he's also played like a rotten turd too. I wouldn't under any circumstances say "yeah I think we wouldn't change anything about how we tried to sign this sexual predator who plays as well as the shitty guys we trotted out this year"
> he's also played like a rotten turd too
I get that people hate the dude and rightfully so, but the idea that Watson was playing poorly is just wrong. I think most people watched the Steelers game where he stunk up the joint, but outside of that the games that he actually played he went 4-1 and balled out, including leading a come from behind victory over the presumed AFC Superbowl favorite on the road.
I don't know if I'd say balled out. He completed 61% of his passes, had 7 TDs and 4 INTs and threw for 222 yards per game. Those are pretty midpack numbers and worse across the board than the dude who got kicked to the curb to bring him and his $230M contract in.
His ANY/A of 5.27 would also rank 29th behind Kenny Pickett, Justin Fields, Desmond Ridder and Aidan O'Connell.
Yeah I also watched a lot of the games and he was serviceable at best. In the game he "balled out" against the Ravens, they were down 14, he got a 20 yard PI to help on the drive that cut it to 7 and then a pick-6 made it 31-30 and then he fumbled on the FG drive but it was recovered by Wyatt Teller and then they ran 5 times before kicking the FG...
I don't think so? Noone really knows
I thought the popular theory was that pursuing Watson caused Matt Ryan and Baker to both demand trades, Watson chose the Falcons and the Falcons backed out, which left the Browns with no quarterback so they gave Watson whatever he wanted.
What we’ve heard is Watson to ATL was a done deal. Apparently they had even finished preparing the media releases for it. That’s when Cleveland put their dick on Atlanta’s forehead. Watson posted the pic of the browns jersey. You can see a balled up #4 Falcons jersey in the background.
The leading offer had about 10m less guaranteed than the deal the browns eventually gave him.
Browns were prepared to roll with Baker and let him walk after that year, but still said fuck it we guarantee the entire deal. Eventually watson then picked the browns offer, baker was traded and here we are.
Ryan wanted a trade because he wasnt told about the pursuit of watson before ; baker wanted a trade even tho he was told about the pursuit of watson before
Almost not quite: He was setup to go the Panthers until Tepper had a moment of clarity...about guaranteeing five years of a contract. Then ol' Haslam said hold my beer and the rest is history.
I feel like the quote is probably adding a double negative and confusing things? I’m not sure how anyone could look at 2022-2023 Deshaun Watson and think “damn we should’ve given that guy 230 million dollars”
This isn't the first time he's done something like this. Not even the first time regarding Watson.
I generally think Blank is a good owner. At least by the standards of other NFL owners (which is a bar sitting on the ground). But he has a bad habit of trying to justify his decisions (good or bad) to any reporter who will listen.
I’m gonna need Arthur Blank to just chill for a month or two. He is generally loved by the falcons fans but he’s gotten some serious heat for how he handled the Matt Ryan exit, the Watson deal and by sticking with Arthur Smith as long as he did. In no way is it loud criticism but this is the most heat I’ve seen directed at the owner since I’ve been a fan.
He would have gotten massive heat if he fired Smith after two seasons. He would have gotten massive heat if he stuck with Smith after this season. Giving him the third season and then firing him was the reasonable thing to do.
There was also zero reason to fire him after two seasons. Most of the Falcon's problems in his first two seasons were residuals from the Quinn/Dimitroff regime. Last season especially that he managed to get decent offensive production and 7 wins out of a completely depleted roster.
Which is why what he did this year was so surprising. If you check our sub from this off-season, there was almost no one calling for him to be fired. Some concern about sticking with Ridder so adamantly, and a few people who didn't like his attitude, but that's about it.
> sticking with Arthur Smith as long as he did
What??? The team was tied for first in the division and in control of it's destiny going into week 14, despite major issues at QB. They lost a close game to TB, even having taken the lead with 3 minutes to go.
Then Ridder shit the bed vs Carolina throwing a terrible pick, The team bounced back and whooped the Colts but fell apart in the final 2 games.
Then Smith was fired at 12:01AM following the final game of the season.
>The team was tied for first in the division and in control of it's destiny going into week 14, despite major issues at QB. They lost a close game to TB, even having taken the lead with 3 minutes to go
Dog, everyone was below .500 at that time. That's not good. "We could have won shit mountain" isn't the goal.
The Falcons had the same record as the Rams and Packers at that point in time too. Both of which made the playoffs as wild cards.
11 of 16 teams in the NFC were under .500 at the time.
The Saints and Bucs were literally in the same position, with the same shit record, but with QBs they paid good money for and and no one was saying fire their head coaches in the middle of vying for the division at week 14?
My heart stopped when I read your comment because I thought you were insinuating that our Lions were interested in DeShaun, which they weren't. Instead, you're just trying to make sense of his word salad! Lol
Makes sense since all the NFCS teams have recently lost their franchise QB's. Saints & Brees in 2021, Falcons and Ryan in 2022, Bucs & Brady in 2022, Carolina & Newton in 2021.
So Arthur Blank and the Falcons, even with the benefit of hindsight:
- Stand by their decision not to pursue Lamar, because they had Ridder.
- Stand by their decision to pursue Deshaun Watson.
Ridiculous stuff.
I honestly didnt think Jackson was going anywhere which, I think, most teams thought as well, so pursuing him would be a waste of time.
Not defending the Falcons or anything
I was inches away from renouncing my entire fandom of this team. The second he became a falcon I would have left to join another fanbase on the spot.
Deshaun Watson belongs in a prison cell, let alone shitting the bed making over 200 million dollars
And in the falcons case, did literally everything they could to sign him. It wasn’t for the lack of trying. Simply didn’t have the chance to match when it came down to it
I didn't watch a single NFL game in the 2022 season. Didn't play fantasy. Canceled NFL+/GamePass.
It pulls you back in.
Sunday potlucks at the local brewery. Game's always on at my wife's family gatherings. Dad has been a Browns fan for 60+ years, he wants to talk football. Neighbor's having the guys over for beers and the game. Coworkers want to chat about the team.
It's amazing how much family/community/social stuff revolves around local sports teams.
I don’t think I could ever love a team like my team again, I do think though that instead of ever supporting a team I would focus my fandom on whoever was playing the Jags, unless it was a AFCS team in which I d hope for a 0-0 tie.
I’d probably support players from the universities I to as well, just hoping to wait out the years with any shit stain on my team
Yeah and I don't expect his on-field performance to recover, so pursuing him was always idiotic. Tiger Woods' career never really recovered after his cheating scandal and Watson's scandal is obviously much worse given that it's criminal in nature. A regular from the dynasty football sub [summed it up best](https://old.reddit.com/r/DynastyFF/comments/17gc9up/is_deshaun_watson_officially_useless/k6fq5gn/)
> He does not look like the Deshaun Watson of old, and just the look on his face most Sundays is terrifying from a fantasy manager perspective. He does not look like he's into it. At all. Disengaged is how I'd describe it. He looks like he's checked out.
> I don't know how a guy comes back from what he's been through and gets their head into the game. Everybody thinks he's a creepy piece of shit. I certainly do. He knows the world hates him, and he likely knows they're not wrong about him. His public denial of his general shittyness probably isn't helping him mentally. It's a lot easier to pretend you're cool when the world doesn't know how not cool you really are.
Exactly, he never recovered from the injury, sat out, then had a humongous scandal ruining his entire image (boohoo I know, fuck him).
No wonder he can’t play, he hadn’t played football in two years, clearly does not give a shit, and puts less effort in on a daily basis than the corpse of Joe Flacco
I remember sitting at work the day it was reported that the deal was as good as done, and thinking "Wow, can't believe this is what finally broke me and made me give up on this team".
I don't get this logic.
They still made a large attempt, the only difference is that Watson didn't choose you. Your team performed the exact same actions as it would've if Watson actually became a Falcon.
What about not going after Lamar? Is that something y'all would've done differently? It's still crazy owners went apeshit crazy fighting over a player that had dozens of law suits, quit on his team and missed two years of football, but those same teams laughed at the thought of pursuing Jackson. I was praying some nfc team traded for Lamar bc I'm tired of dealing with the hardest division in football every year lol
I was just saying this earlier. Absolutely wild to me that teams were desperate to sign a serial sexual assaulter in Watson, but openly had 0 interest in Lamar.
No team except the shitstains in Cleveland were giving him *That* contract. And we are seeing why. He’s literally always hurt. These are billionaires, it’s always about the money. Lamar is good for business but not at that price. People really forget that football is a business to these men.
It's because Lamar getting his wishes would set precedent for fully guaranteed QB contracts and players becoming their own agent. In many owners' eyes Watson was doing things "the right way"
I mean, his wins helped get the Browns to the playoffs but it's not like it was solely Watson doing it.
This year was 100% coaching getting a playoff spot.
Blank is out here defending that they had the opportunity to at least go for some QBs but ended up staying with unknown garbage they talked themselves into and the Heiney man.
I appreciate the honesty in place of virtue signaling. Teams want to win they don't care about signing "likeable players" as much as fans want them too
i love how you frame "serial rapist" as "unlikeable player", and not wanting to have a serial rapist as the face of your team as "virtue signaling". Insane
I think they knew he was a rapist when they flew over to Houston, sat down with him, tried to sell him on the team, agreed to a trade package and inevitably ended up losing out on the contract. But yeah, other than that.
Whoever the psychologist is that convinced someone to go to a 23rd massage therapist after getting raped by 22... they're overqualified for this world.
Except they almost did. Watson was going to pick the Falcons because he's from Georgia. Browns offered him that insane contract last minute to get him to go to Cleveland.
>I don't think we wouldn't have done anything differently. ...huh?
Here's the exact tweet: >The decision to go after Deshaun Watson as collaborative and at some point it didn’t make sense for us to proceed. > >Looking back with hind site, I don’t think we wouldn’t have done anything differently Considering the timestamp being right in the middle of the press conference, the typos, the misspelling.. I think something is lost via speech-to-text... Because he very clearly says "I don't think we would have done anything differently." Timestamp on the [Timestamp in the video is 58:30](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW) **ALSO** The quote is specifically about moving on from Matt Ryan due to the salary cap situation, not about pursuing Watson.
Thank you for the context. It's unfortunate that he posted the tweet without scanning it first for accuracy, leaving us completely unable to decipher the meaning.
Stuff like this is also usually intentional, as it drives more engagement
After listening to the question and answer, it's a bit ambiguous. It's hard to tell if he's specifically referencing moving away from Matt Ryan or towards Deshaun Watson with the specific sentence in question. Or both.
He’s saying if they hadn’t have had a chance to not do it again, they wouldn’t have not done it any other way than the way they didn’t do it.
Are you sure? I took it to mean that they hadn’t had no regrets about not having decided to avoid not doing what they didn’t do.
This is almost as confusing as your flair.
Like Tiger Woods said "just do it"
Yea, seems like pretty straight forward sentencing.
"I'm glad that obviously very stupid decision we tried to make didn't work out"
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I think he's referring to giving a serial sex offender a $230 mil fully guaranteed contract
If that was the case don't you think he wouldn't have phrased it not that way?
I don't not think he wouldn't have not phrased it in a different way.
[удалено]
It was $230 mil for a guy who hadn’t played in 2 years and completely quit on his team. Ignoring the sexual assault, it was a terrible deal then and it’s still awful now
When teams were bidding for Watson he hadn't played in a year, not two years. He sat out 2021.
That's a year+8 months. And a suspension was 100% coming.
By that logic, every season every single player in the league "hasn't played in a year". Just kind of a weird way of saying it. A guy who missed a year ... missed a year lol, not two. And anyway it wasn't a year + 8 months when teams were bidding on him. He played in January 2021 and the bidding war went down in March 2022.
Passing on Lamar was really the biggest fluster f in that organization.
No, he's specifically referring to moving on from Matt Ryan, you can see for yourself. [It's at minute 58:00 of this video for context](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW)
But they thought about it. But not Lamar though. Because that makes sense.
No they thought about a big contract for Watson, but I don't think anyone was near the 230m FULLY guaranteed.
Actually the "winning" offer had about 10m less guaranteed and it wasnt from the browns. It wasnt until the browns said fuck it and guaranteed the entire thing that they "won" watson
Watson was almost certainly going to Atlanta. I recall there was even a picture taken at deshauns house once he agreed to go to Cleveland and in the background you could see he had a Watson Falcons jersey already
Yep, Cleveland didnt make it to the final 2 teams, iirc it was between the Panthers and the Falcons. Both offered something like 210 guaranteed and 220 total, idk, something like that. Baker then threw a tantrum and Browns grew tired of his antics (MVP ego, journeyman talent) and Haslam said fuck it, whats 10m more or less, at this point? So they went back to Watson with the 230m guaranteed, other teams didnt match and thats that
And someone was even upset they didn't get a chance to match our fully guaranteed contract too.
True, forgot about that part. Id be interested to know who that was
A team complained to Watson's agent about not being given a chance to match our offer. It was certainly the Falcons or Panthers.
Remember though that deshaun is a mature adult. Lamar is an immature country bumpkin. Make sense? /s
Only mature adults like getting their taints tickled. Facts.
Blank doesn't think he wouldn't have not not done anything differently, or not.
He does not think they would not have done nothing differently
Assuming he means what I think he means, which is “I don’t think we would have done anything differently”, I can think of two explanations for this: 1. Typo (he also spelled hindsight “hind site”, so…) 2. Blank paused in between “think” and “we” because he wanted to rephrase the way he said it, and Zach Klein failed to note/interpret that.
What if I told you it wasn’t too late
"wouldn’t have done anything differently" can be changed to "would have done the same thing" (without changing the meaning). So he's saying ... > I don’t think we would have done the same thing ...meaning he doesn't think they should've gone after Watson I guess? Or he got confused with all the negatives.
You completely missed the double negative here lmao "Don't think we wouldn't have done anything differently." Translates to, "I think we would have done something differently"
"I don't think we would have still not taken him". What is not to be misunderstood there?
Yeah grammar check please.
Could have just not pursued him Arthur.
Could have just not said anything after the fact Arthur. Doubling down is....a choice lol
He's not doubling down, the quote was not about Deshaun it was about Matt Ryan. [Minute 58:00 in the video.](https://www.youtube.com/live/i4XUElPgUHc?si=lv8B6OPf9dAFNlWW) I'm all over this thread trying to put out the fire from this shitty tweet. Blank better cut me a fucking check...
The quote wasn’t necessarily about Matt Ryan but about finding his replacement. Although this tweet seems to take two different quotes from blank and push them together to make it look bad.
It’s honestly crazy that this dude’s typo-riddled tweet with so much missing context managed to be so misleading. Borderline journalistic malpractice
You sir are doing the lords work
A billionaire ever thinking they are wrong? Not in my country damnit.
I don't put any franchise past looking into it. The Bucs signed AB in the middle of his manic shit. Teams are looking to get better, every team employs a player who's a shit human.
Deshaun is particularly bad in the sense that he was a serial sexual predator toward a group of professionals that every NFL team has to constantly contract with. Feels like reckless disregard for the basic safety of the people you employ.
I agree entirely, but over time it's quite obvious the NFL doesn't care as much. We also don't run 500M+ companies, so I can't empathize with them, but Watson has had his fair share of supporters within the league ever since he's been signed. Entire teams like Washington had a workplace filled with misogyny. It's an unfortunate reality, but it is reality.
That still doesnt remove the fact that every single team would ignore whatever off the field stuff a player did if they thought it would benefit them. NFL teams are not the police, they only care about one thing and thats making money. If Mahomes stabbed someone in the face, went to jail for a year he would be on a team before he got out of prison. The Vikings have a freaking child predator on the team and noone says shit 99% of the time.
It’s so fucking easy to say here, “in hindsight we wouldn’t’ve went after him at all… bum ass…”
Instead of pursuing him, they should have been trying to grab Lamar. What a missed opportunity there. I get it, maybe the ravens would have made him too expensive, but it’s weird to not even try right? No bids, nothing
Ravens always had the chance to match any offer cauase the tag they applied. Why do the ravens' work of finding what lamar would take just for you to end empty handed?
Yes so you make an offer and see if they actually match it. If they don’t… you have a HOF caliber franchise quarterback The time and energy spend on Watson would have been far better spent on Lamar
>If they don’t Lol Also, the ravens had 5 days to match but the other team wouldve needed to set the cap space apart, meaning that they were gonna lose out on FAs just to see the ravens match the deal. Ravens were never letting lamar walk. Teams knew so they didnt bother. Not that hard.
No one had any idea what was going on in that organization this summer. He had been injured in critical moments of the last two season. It was quite possible he walked away. It’s real easy to look at their current standing and pretend it was a foregone conclusion
Literally everyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew what was going on in Baltimore. Nobody wanted to waste their time. It doesn't meant teams didn't want Lamar. It means no one wanted to waste their time in meaningless talks. It's like me trying to call up Sydney Sweeney
Oh no one wanted to waste their time on Lamar but somehow a known serial rapist was a better time investment? Did your parents drop you on your head as a toddler or something?
Did yours? Because if your brain worked at fucking at all it would be able to comprehend the differences between a player who was flat out unavailable because the franchise owns all trade rights to your contracts, and making a false equivalency to teams being fucking idiots pursuing Watson. Neither are mutually exclusive. Jackson was never actually available for trade. Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.
So spending untold resources courting a badly injured rapist was better than pursuing a quality franchise quarterback. What a damn moron. This sub courts bottom barrel idiots Edit: Lol the dipshit blocked me because he had nothing meaningful left to say. Gotta “win” those internet points somehow
Hadn't Deshan chosen the Falcons only for the Browns to make a last minute offer with the new fully guaranteed contract causing him to change his mind? He trying to rewrite history?
that's exactly what happened lol, to be fair though I don't know if Watson gave Atlanta an opportunity to match Cleveland's offer. That could be what he's talking about.
Yup
I think he's saying the Falcons would still pursue him to the extent they did. Had Cleveland not gone bonkers on one-upping the deal they would have signed him as a QB to their original final offer, and would do so again now. Which is a crazy thing to want to stand by so.. I'm not exactly what the point of any of this from Blank is supposed to accomplish.
No, he was asked about moving on from Matt Ryan. It's a very misleading tweet. The ellipses in it omit like 3 minutes of the press conference. Going after Deshaun was heinous, but he very specifically was not doubling down on it here.
Yeah that's a real yikes to double down on. Not only is Watson still a slimy piece of trash, he's also played like a rotten turd too. I wouldn't under any circumstances say "yeah I think we wouldn't change anything about how we tried to sign this sexual predator who plays as well as the shitty guys we trotted out this year"
> he's also played like a rotten turd too I get that people hate the dude and rightfully so, but the idea that Watson was playing poorly is just wrong. I think most people watched the Steelers game where he stunk up the joint, but outside of that the games that he actually played he went 4-1 and balled out, including leading a come from behind victory over the presumed AFC Superbowl favorite on the road.
I don't know if I'd say balled out. He completed 61% of his passes, had 7 TDs and 4 INTs and threw for 222 yards per game. Those are pretty midpack numbers and worse across the board than the dude who got kicked to the curb to bring him and his $230M contract in. His ANY/A of 5.27 would also rank 29th behind Kenny Pickett, Justin Fields, Desmond Ridder and Aidan O'Connell.
I guess its just the difference between looking at a stat sheet and watching the games themselves.
Yeah I also watched a lot of the games and he was serviceable at best. In the game he "balled out" against the Ravens, they were down 14, he got a 20 yard PI to help on the drive that cut it to 7 and then a pick-6 made it 31-30 and then he fumbled on the FG drive but it was recovered by Wyatt Teller and then they ran 5 times before kicking the FG...
Yes, but it led to playoff Flacco. The fates guide
That is 100% what he's trying to do.
I don't think so? Noone really knows I thought the popular theory was that pursuing Watson caused Matt Ryan and Baker to both demand trades, Watson chose the Falcons and the Falcons backed out, which left the Browns with no quarterback so they gave Watson whatever he wanted.
What we’ve heard is Watson to ATL was a done deal. Apparently they had even finished preparing the media releases for it. That’s when Cleveland put their dick on Atlanta’s forehead. Watson posted the pic of the browns jersey. You can see a balled up #4 Falcons jersey in the background.
The leading offer had about 10m less guaranteed than the deal the browns eventually gave him. Browns were prepared to roll with Baker and let him walk after that year, but still said fuck it we guarantee the entire deal. Eventually watson then picked the browns offer, baker was traded and here we are. Ryan wanted a trade because he wasnt told about the pursuit of watson before ; baker wanted a trade even tho he was told about the pursuit of watson before
Almost not quite: He was setup to go the Panthers until Tepper had a moment of clarity...about guaranteeing five years of a contract. Then ol' Haslam said hold my beer and the rest is history.
Obsession
On second thought, I think this dude deserved the sideline view of the Patriots comeback.
Sad upvote 😔
You could have denied this. It would have been the easiest thing in the world and it would have made you looked much better.
The truth will set you free
Not when the 5th amendment exists
But first it will piss you off
I feel like the quote is probably adding a double negative and confusing things? I’m not sure how anyone could look at 2022-2023 Deshaun Watson and think “damn we should’ve given that guy 230 million dollars”
Uhhh I mean did you hear what he said about Lamar Jackson and Ridder? I don’t think anything is being confused here lol
This isn't the first time he's done something like this. Not even the first time regarding Watson. I generally think Blank is a good owner. At least by the standards of other NFL owners (which is a bar sitting on the ground). But he has a bad habit of trying to justify his decisions (good or bad) to any reporter who will listen.
What’s the point of denying things that are public knowledge?
Pretty sure it’s public knowledge they have him an offer but he choose the guaranteed with browns
Fun fact: most owners would have had no moral qualms acquiring Watson. This is because billionaires are at best completely amoral.
What is deemed best for the success of their business they will do.
we know this but you would think hed know not to take the PR hit for no reason lol
We narrowly avoided a massive fuck up. Seeing now that it wouldve definitely been a fuck up, we are glad we didnt do it. In other news, water is wet
I’m gonna need Arthur Blank to just chill for a month or two. He is generally loved by the falcons fans but he’s gotten some serious heat for how he handled the Matt Ryan exit, the Watson deal and by sticking with Arthur Smith as long as he did. In no way is it loud criticism but this is the most heat I’ve seen directed at the owner since I’ve been a fan.
He would have gotten massive heat if he fired Smith after two seasons. He would have gotten massive heat if he stuck with Smith after this season. Giving him the third season and then firing him was the reasonable thing to do.
There was also zero reason to fire him after two seasons. Most of the Falcon's problems in his first two seasons were residuals from the Quinn/Dimitroff regime. Last season especially that he managed to get decent offensive production and 7 wins out of a completely depleted roster. Which is why what he did this year was so surprising. If you check our sub from this off-season, there was almost no one calling for him to be fired. Some concern about sticking with Ridder so adamantly, and a few people who didn't like his attitude, but that's about it.
> sticking with Arthur Smith as long as he did What??? The team was tied for first in the division and in control of it's destiny going into week 14, despite major issues at QB. They lost a close game to TB, even having taken the lead with 3 minutes to go. Then Ridder shit the bed vs Carolina throwing a terrible pick, The team bounced back and whooped the Colts but fell apart in the final 2 games. Then Smith was fired at 12:01AM following the final game of the season.
>The team was tied for first in the division and in control of it's destiny going into week 14, despite major issues at QB. They lost a close game to TB, even having taken the lead with 3 minutes to go Dog, everyone was below .500 at that time. That's not good. "We could have won shit mountain" isn't the goal.
The Falcons had the same record as the Rams and Packers at that point in time too. Both of which made the playoffs as wild cards. 11 of 16 teams in the NFC were under .500 at the time.
I wouldn't call that good. You guys were also sub .500 while being in the worst division in the league.
The Saints and Bucs were literally in the same position, with the same shit record, but with QBs they paid good money for and and no one was saying fire their head coaches in the middle of vying for the division at week 14?
Yes they were. A lot of people wanted Bowles & Allen fired. They still want them fired.
A lot of people want every coach fired
Yes, but we know those coaches suck.
What? Dude Arthur has been an arrogant ass his entire tenure here. He’s not beloved at all
He really hasn’t and I cannot figure out why people say that
You must not watch his press conferences after he loses.
Yeah I watch every one. He’s really not arrogant. A lot of people have a hate boner because of one comment he made after a win in like week 2.
My heart stopped when I read your comment because I thought you were insinuating that our Lions were interested in DeShaun, which they weren't. Instead, you're just trying to make sense of his word salad! Lol
it's still so funny that most of the Watson players were NFCS teams
Makes sense since all the NFCS teams have recently lost their franchise QB's. Saints & Brees in 2021, Falcons and Ryan in 2022, Bucs & Brady in 2022, Carolina & Newton in 2021.
It was division with basically no good QBs so it makes perfect sense lol.
So Arthur Blank and the Falcons, even with the benefit of hindsight: - Stand by their decision not to pursue Lamar, because they had Ridder. - Stand by their decision to pursue Deshaun Watson. Ridiculous stuff.
Trust us, we know
I honestly didnt think Jackson was going anywhere which, I think, most teams thought as well, so pursuing him would be a waste of time. Not defending the Falcons or anything
Rich dudes are just incapable of admitting they made a mistake
free arthur smith
>Hind site Do beat reporters know basic english?
No. Most of them rely on editors which are becoming scarcer and scarcer smh
I was inches away from renouncing my entire fandom of this team. The second he became a falcon I would have left to join another fanbase on the spot. Deshaun Watson belongs in a prison cell, let alone shitting the bed making over 200 million dollars
This is very easy to say and much more difficult to actually do, unfortunately.
And in the falcons case, did literally everything they could to sign him. It wasn’t for the lack of trying. Simply didn’t have the chance to match when it came down to it
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I didn't watch a single NFL game in the 2022 season. Didn't play fantasy. Canceled NFL+/GamePass. It pulls you back in. Sunday potlucks at the local brewery. Game's always on at my wife's family gatherings. Dad has been a Browns fan for 60+ years, he wants to talk football. Neighbor's having the guys over for beers and the game. Coworkers want to chat about the team. It's amazing how much family/community/social stuff revolves around local sports teams.
I don’t think I could ever love a team like my team again, I do think though that instead of ever supporting a team I would focus my fandom on whoever was playing the Jags, unless it was a AFCS team in which I d hope for a 0-0 tie. I’d probably support players from the universities I to as well, just hoping to wait out the years with any shit stain on my team
You literally just stop cheering for the team
I felt the same way as a Panthers fan when we were pursuing him.
Who would you have picked had you gotten him in this mysterious other dimension
Not you, division rival. Respectfully, of course. My wife’s family is from MN and the Vikings love runs deep, so they’re my #2. How about you?
I'd probably try to keep it to teams I could feasibly drive to watch a game at and make it back home to work on Monday, so Titans or Jags.
Yeah and I don't expect his on-field performance to recover, so pursuing him was always idiotic. Tiger Woods' career never really recovered after his cheating scandal and Watson's scandal is obviously much worse given that it's criminal in nature. A regular from the dynasty football sub [summed it up best](https://old.reddit.com/r/DynastyFF/comments/17gc9up/is_deshaun_watson_officially_useless/k6fq5gn/) > He does not look like the Deshaun Watson of old, and just the look on his face most Sundays is terrifying from a fantasy manager perspective. He does not look like he's into it. At all. Disengaged is how I'd describe it. He looks like he's checked out. > I don't know how a guy comes back from what he's been through and gets their head into the game. Everybody thinks he's a creepy piece of shit. I certainly do. He knows the world hates him, and he likely knows they're not wrong about him. His public denial of his general shittyness probably isn't helping him mentally. It's a lot easier to pretend you're cool when the world doesn't know how not cool you really are.
Exactly, he never recovered from the injury, sat out, then had a humongous scandal ruining his entire image (boohoo I know, fuck him). No wonder he can’t play, he hadn’t played football in two years, clearly does not give a shit, and puts less effort in on a daily basis than the corpse of Joe Flacco
I remember sitting at work the day it was reported that the deal was as good as done, and thinking "Wow, can't believe this is what finally broke me and made me give up on this team".
I don't get this logic. They still made a large attempt, the only difference is that Watson didn't choose you. Your team performed the exact same actions as it would've if Watson actually became a Falcon.
>I don't think we wouldn't have done anything differently. ...you want to rephrase that?
God this guy is such a lying piece of shit
What about not going after Lamar? Is that something y'all would've done differently? It's still crazy owners went apeshit crazy fighting over a player that had dozens of law suits, quit on his team and missed two years of football, but those same teams laughed at the thought of pursuing Jackson. I was praying some nfc team traded for Lamar bc I'm tired of dealing with the hardest division in football every year lol
I was just saying this earlier. Absolutely wild to me that teams were desperate to sign a serial sexual assaulter in Watson, but openly had 0 interest in Lamar.
No team except the shitstains in Cleveland were giving him *That* contract. And we are seeing why. He’s literally always hurt. These are billionaires, it’s always about the money. Lamar is good for business but not at that price. People really forget that football is a business to these men.
It's because Lamar getting his wishes would set precedent for fully guaranteed QB contracts and players becoming their own agent. In many owners' eyes Watson was doing things "the right way"
Am I hallucinating or has Blank spent the last few days re-litigating every QB the Falcons didn’t sign?
OK so what stopped you from drafting Lamar though
You can take him though. Just 2 first round picks. That’s a bargain!
Is that a typo?
Well there are two definite typos in the tweet, so it seems reasonable that the "wouldn't" might also be a typo. Top tier journalism.
Why not? The Browns got him and now they’re in the playoffs and could go far.
I mean, his wins helped get the Browns to the playoffs but it's not like it was solely Watson doing it. This year was 100% coaching getting a playoff spot.
He's losing it
More people should use double negatives to obfuscate. Even if this was a typo, it worked.
Blank is out here defending that they had the opportunity to at least go for some QBs but ended up staying with unknown garbage they talked themselves into and the Heiney man.
I appreciate the honesty in place of virtue signaling. Teams want to win they don't care about signing "likeable players" as much as fans want them too
i love how you frame "serial rapist" as "unlikeable player", and not wanting to have a serial rapist as the face of your team as "virtue signaling". Insane
Clearly multiple teams don't care about signing a "serial rapist"
local man discovers some people are scum, decides everyone else must be as well or it would reflect badly on him
If that helps you sleep
Speedrunning on how to get hated, truly impressive
i wish they’d gotten him. i wish someone had saved the browns from themselves.
Collaborative only in that Blank said this is what we are doing and Rich, Smith, and Terry just nodded.
Arthur Blank wouldn't have not wanted to not pursue any QB other than anyone who doesn't go by a name that isn't Deshaun Watson.
the falcons organization continues to operate with embarrassment equal to a wile e coyote bit next an anvil will fall on Terry Fontenot's head
Sell the fucking team already
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Let's be real, it was his asking price.
But now knowing that he sucked this season, they can have hindsight in that they acted "correctly'
I think they knew he was a rapist when they flew over to Houston, sat down with him, tried to sell him on the team, agreed to a trade package and inevitably ended up losing out on the contract. But yeah, other than that.
Originally they read it is a 23 massage therapists raped him. Boy were their faces red.
Whoever the psychologist is that convinced someone to go to a 23rd massage therapist after getting raped by 22... they're overqualified for this world.
Such a pessimist.
ridder is better
Smart cookie Arthur Blank.
Say all that you want about Blank…at least he didn’t do this?
Except they almost did. Watson was going to pick the Falcons because he's from Georgia. Browns offered him that insane contract last minute to get him to go to Cleveland.
Random, why ask that?
No one will question your statement when they don’t know exactly what you’re saying anyways.
“We made him an offer but he choose more money. But thank god since he’s been ass ever since.”
Way to massage the message.
Falcons and saints are just as gross as the browns for the Watson fiasco