The Texans won't "give in" as much as the offers will start getting better. The Texans hold the cards here. The price will go up and up and up until the night before the draft.
If the Jets offered that, it would be an offer I would love for the Texas to take it. Excerpts on Zach Wilson "He completed 62% of passes downfield. [The] best ever since ESPN started recording that stat." "He scares the crap out of me because my comparisons that keep coming to mind when I watch him are too good. I keep looking at him and he's got such a smooth, natural ability. He just floats off his back foot and flips it like Aaron Rodgers. He just runs to his left and throws it 60 yards downfield like Patrick Mahomes. Last year I did not get in the Jordan Love comparison with Patrick Mahomes. This guy (Zach Wilson) reminds me of them. His deep ball accuracy is second to none." - David Pollack https://www.si.com/college/byu/news/david-pollack-compares-zach-wilson-to-aaron-rodgers
Said the same thing with Harden they need to trade him before the season (preferably around the draft) and get 3 firsts plus. If the bears offered 3 + for wilson we should be looking for at least same
Obviously the Texans are saying they won't trade him in order to increase the buy in at the big boys table. Of course they'd trade him. If they continue showing their poker face, these teams will continue upping the ante. I'm a terrible poker player, but we're basically playing in the last chair at the table, with pocket aces, and we're trying to bait the players at the table to stay in the game as we keep raising the pot.
If Watson wasn’t planning to play for them if not traded, why would he decide to play for them now, especially if he believes the Texans set him up? He’d been more determined than ever to dig in, stay away and hope to force the issue. But Watson would be one unhappy camper returning to a team only for financial reasons and playing for a team he believes set him up. I believe Watson is still destined to be traded, but rather than by the draft as I’ve been predicting, I now think it could be during the season at the trade deadline or before the 2022 draft. Teams will want Watson to have his legal issues settled, and they’ll want to know the results of the NFL’s investigation for possible violation of the league’s personal conduct policy. If Watson’s legal issues are resolved, and he’s been cleared to play by the NFL, I don’t think the Texans will get anywhere close to what they could have gotten by the draft, but Watson’s legal problems have changed the landscape considerably. Before the civil lawsuits were filed against Watson this week, the Texans were planning to get multiple teams competing for the quarterback. They were hoping to receive three first-round draft choices, two second-round picks and at least on defensive starter in a trade sometime before the draft. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/john-mcclain/article/McClain-Forget-the-conspiracy-theories-Deshaun-16038630.php
https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/03/22/m...-patriots-spend-carson-wentz-matthew-stafford I think the Deshaun Watson news of this week freezes his trade market. And I can sum up why with two assumptions I feel fairly comfortable making. 1) The Texans would need a historic haul to justify letting him go. 2) Any other team will want clarity on this matter before yielding a historic haul. And from there, I’ll say this: There’s no way to have a “take” on the allegations that Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee says 22 women are bringing in a slew of civil lawsuits without either a) indicting Watson, or b) not taking the allegations seriously enough. So I think all of us need to let this play out, and I think any team interested in trading for Watson, and there are a lot of them, will have to as well. In fact, I talked to a couple over the weekend that conceded this puts any pursuit of Watson on hold for the time being. Which, really, doesn’t change much, since Houston GM Nick Caserio has said to teams that have called varying versions of, “You can ask me about anybody but the quarterback.” This week, the Texans signed Tyrod Taylor and traded for Ryan Finley, and I saw the Taylor addition not as finding the future replacement for Watson, but more so building solid depth, giving Watson a veteran resource at the position, and building some holdout insurance into the roster. But all of that feels a little trivial right now. https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/03/22/nfl-free-agency-tv-deal-fmia-peter-king/ Think how dramatically Watson’s world has changed in a week. Last Monday, we were speculating how much hardball the Texans would play to keep him on their roster, and, if he was traded, whether the Panthers, Jets or Dolphins were the leaders. But between Tuesday and Friday, attorney Tony Buzbee filed seven civil suits against Watson on behalf of women claiming he preyed on them sexually. Buzbee indicated Saturday he intends to pursue criminal charges against Watson with Houston police and the local district attorney. To say this is out of character for Watson is an understatement. I spoke to someone close to Watson over the weekend, and this person was stunned at the charges and had never seen him treat women with anything but respect. So let’s wait for all the evidence to surface. It’s smart in such cases to keep an open mind until we see complete details and stories. For today, while it seems totally insensitive to the gravity of the charges, we just don’t know enough about the cases to draw any factual conclusions. So I’ll stick to the football meaning of the Watson story for now. While lawyers are combing through the allegations, there is no way a team could trade for Watson now. Even if the Texans were to engage teams in talks, a team could not acquire a franchise quarterback as great and promising as the 25-year-old Watson with this Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. No matter how much faith you have in Watson’s goodness, there’s too much we don’t know right now to risk a mega-trade to acquire him. Could a team try, while the allegations against Watson hang in the air? Perhaps. One former NFL GM told me Sunday he thinks a smart GM would check in regularly to tell Houston GM Nick Caserio of his interest—regardless how dire it looks now. I suppose . . . but I can’t see how even the most supportive fan base would be okay with a pursuit of Watson now. And it’s unlikely the matter will be cleared up in the 38 days before the start of the 2021 NFL Draft. So absent a trade by draft weekend, that could knock three or four contenders for a Watson trade out of the box. The Jets (picking second overall) could draft their quarterback of the future, as could Atlanta (fourth), Philadelphia (sixth), Carolina (eighth) and another team trading into the top 10 (San Francisco?) prior to the draft. The Texans could still make a deal for Watson if he was in the clear at any time, but crucial contenders would disappear by the end of April. The difference between civil and criminal charges is very important to Watson’s NFL future. The NFL draws a strong line between the different courses of legal action. If there are criminal charges, and the cases stretch into September, the NFL could put Watson on the Commissioner’s Exempt List, as it did in 2014 with Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson as they contested similarly ugly allegations. That would take Watson off the field and away from his team, at full pay, while the case or cases are being adjudicated. But if there are no criminal charges and the cases are civil only, the Commission’s Exempt List would not be an option, and Watson would likely be allowed to play. Of course, if he is still determined to not play for Houston and voluntarily does not report, then he would incur heavy fines and forfeit his $10.5-million salary for as long as he sits. Also, it’s unlikely but not impossible that any team would trade for him while any civil suits are in progress. The forecast for Watson’s future: cloudy. But it’s premature to think of the Commissioner’s Exempt List as a landing spot for Watson—unless criminal charges are filed and the legal timeline stretches into the season.
The flipside is that Rookie QB3 doesn't cost $40MM/yr the next several years. For a salary-capped team that's trying to contend, that matters a lot. And the top pick they traded was #12. With Jets/Miami scenarios, one of the multiple-first-rounders would have been a top 3 pick.
In the what have you done for me lately league Deshaun Watson has done nothing for the Houston Texans
Watson tried to get traded in January. Texans should have done what Detroit did and say "we're trading him this week. Everyone make your best offer". He'd be someone else's headache right now. But it's the Texans, so ...
