by When Deshaun Watson sat out the 2021 NFL season, things rumbled along without him.
The league produced a record $11 billion in national revenue. TV ratings increased 10%, the highest since 2015. More than 110 million viewers tuned in for the Super Bowl, also the highest since 2015.
The NFL didn’t miss Deshaun Watson.
And yet, after a year spent in limbo while facing 26 lawsuits from massage therapists detailing alleged misconduct, Watson, a franchise quarterback at his best, was not viewed as a written-off asset but rather a hot commodity.
His former team, the Houston Texans, acquired six draft picks, including three consecutive first-rounders, from the Cleveland Browns. The Browns gave Watson a record $230 million guarantee, including a $45 million signing bonus, even though they knew an NFL suspension — ultimately 11 games into the 2022 season — was imminent.
BAUER DFA’D: Los Angeles says Bauer is no longer part of our organization
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Never mind the very specific allegations that surfaced in two dozen lawsuits against Watson, 23 of which were settled confidentially. Or the notion that he deployed dozens of massage therapists in a short period of time — 66 in 17 months, according to one report.
And never mind that nearly half of NFL fans are women. Watson can win football games.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Dodgers designated Trevor Bauer for assignment, cutting ties with the pitcher 15 days after an arbitrator upheld 60% of his 324-game suspension imposed by Major League Baseball for violating its joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policies . The 324-game suspension was a record under the policy, and after Bauer’s appeal, the 194-game suspension remains the longest ever.
The suspension cost Bauer $37.5 million in salary, although he will still receive about $22 million of the $35.3 million owed to him this year. His biggest loss may not be money.
There is a better than zero chance that Bauer has played his last major league game; at least we know one team has decided to wash their hands. It will take 29 more clubs to decide if any benefits to a soon-to-be 32-year-old short-season Cy Young Award winner will be worth the reputational damage. Perhaps some will even acknowledge, as part of their calculation, the feelings of women whose otherwise carefree day at the ballpark would be marred by the sight of Bauer pitching for or against their favorite team.
To be clear, this is not meant to be an NFL bad, MLB good workout.
Still, a major league environment that would purge itself of Bauer signals a cultural shift, albeit modest, that has occurred among the league and its franchisees. It is equally clear that such a development has not fully occurred in the NFL, at least not when it involves a player of Watson’s caliber.
Bauer is a very good pitcher and would upgrade anyone’s rotation. That’s why the Dodgers awarded him a $102 million contract in February 2021, even though the right-hander’s personality provoked more red flags than you’d see over 188 laps at Talladega.
A not inconsiderable number of Dodgers fans voiced their displeasure when Bauer was signed, holding their noses when he pitched. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman claimed the club did its homework on Bauer. Now Friedman has one more year to juggle the consequences of the most ill-advised transaction of his otherwise distinguished career.
Things soured almost immediately, Bauer ended up on administrative leave in July 2021 after a California woman sought a five-year protective order against him. She alleged that Bauer choked her unconscious during two otherwise consensual sexual encounters and penetrated her anally without her consent. The woman sought treatment in hospital for facial and vaginal injuries.
The protective order was eventually lifted in August 2021, and after a seven-month review of the allegations, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office chose not to press charges. But sports too often remind us of the difficulty of prosecuting alleged sexual abuse, and that a lack of charges does not necessarily indicate an absence of abuse.
This concept is a mainstay of MLB’s domestic violence policy, evidenced by the 15 domestic violence suspensions since 2015 – and only one that resulted in a conviction.
The case against Bauer would grow, after a Washington Post report revealed that an Ohio woman received a temporary protection order against Bauer in June 2020, due to injuries she told police she suffered in a 2017 encounter, as well as threatening text messages.
Bauer has denied all allegations, calling his encounters with the California woman “fully consensual,” and has not been charged with a crime. Still, the charges against him created a public record far more extensive than any previous offender of MLB’s domestic violence policy.
After the county chose not to press charges in February 2022, the league office spent nearly three more months discussing discipline before suspending Bauer on April 29. Bauer appealed the suspension.
On December 22, an arbitrator appointed by MLB and the union jointly agreed that the policy was violated, and largely agreed with the parameters of the punishment. In short, a 10-month league investigation followed by nearly eight months of an arbitrator’s deliberations determined that a suspension of unprecedented length was warranted.
The typically bristling Bauer was a little more subdued in his reaction, focusing on the reinstatement rather than the time served. His online acolytes will continue to do their bidding, while talking to themselves.
At this point, to say that you completely reject the allegations against Bauer means that you will probably never believe women.
While Watson’s case differs from Bauer’s on so many levels, his NFL future hinges on the same concept.
Can you watch Watson play quarterback and not think about the two dozen massage therapists who came forward with disturbing allegations against him? Of how they might feel to see him exalted, even if only by drunken sycophants on the shores of Lake Erie?
Can any sexual assault victims — 1 in 6 American women have been victims of rape or attempted rape, according to RAINN — turn on a game involving Watson or Bauer without reopening old wounds?
Unfortunately, the fate of these men’s livelihoods ultimately comes down to business. The Browns made a business decision and can apparently live with whatever blemish may come if Watson leads them to the first Super Bowl in their largely tragicomic history.
We don’t yet know if Watson is specifically repulsive on a local or global scale. One metric isn’t encouraging: A Forbes report indicates NFL viewership is down 3% from last year’s numbers. The NFL says the move of Thursday night’s game from network to streaming is the main culprit, which would deflect blame both from Watson and a damning congressional report on sexual abuse in the Washington Commanders’ organization.
But even if you are strictly married to balances and not, say, basic decency, it is bad to create an environment that is unwelcoming to women.
Now we’ll find out if Bauer is too toxic for 29 other teams, who can simply wait for Bauer to clear waivers and sign him for a minimum of $720,000. The Dodgers have been fine without him, burning a couple of decent if not integral opportunities to replace him with Max Scherzer one year, and rehabilitated the careers of several mid-level pitchers to make up the difference the next.
And perhaps that’s the reality Bauer now faces, a lesson we learned during Watson’s one-year absence. You will almost certainly get your money’s worth. You can air your grievances as loudly and as often as you like.
But you won’t be missed.
