Buccaneers need to stay far away from Deshaun Watson

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are reportedly interested in Deshaun Watson. This potential trade would be a colossal mistake for the Buccaneers.

According to NFL Netwoek’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have “done extensive homework“ as it pertains to the Deshaun Watson situation. If that’s the case, this is one assignment that the Bucs should not turn into the teacher.

There is a myriad of issues with the Buccaneers potentially trading for Watson, but the most obvious is literally nobody knows when he will even be able to play again, and we most likely won’t get the answer anytime soon. If the Bucs truly are in a “win now “mode, then why in the world would they take this risk? Even if every single one of his 22 (TWENTY-TWO) cases are settled and Watson becomes eligible to play, that doesn’t mean he was proven innocent in a court of law. If anything, it makes him look more guilty in the court of public opinion, and that brings us to this.

We obviously are lucky enough to live in a country where it’s innocent until proven guilty, but if everything is settled out of court, we may never know the truth. That said, with the amount of accusations it’s not exactly the best look for Watson. In the case of the Buccaneers, it would be one thing for them to just simply sign him off the street after all of this brouhaha. It would be another thing entirely for them to go out of their way to bring him into Tampa Bay by giving up a plethora of picks and/or players for his services.

Would Watson help on the field? Absolutely. When we last saw him playing, he was one of, if not the best young quarterback in the entire NFL, and the Bucs have a glaring need at the most important position. However, whichever team brings in Watson will be dealing with a ton of off-the-field distractions and unwanted attention from the media and general public alike that may honestly be too much to overcome. The Buccaneers had enough distractions with the Antonio Brown snafu this past season, and look what happened with that. There is something to be said about players not needing to be role models off the field as much as they need to perform on the field, but what Watson is being accused of is another matter entirely, and far more severe. This is not just an run of the mill boo-boo, or even 22 of them. This is serious stuff.

We haven’t even scratched the surface on the financial ramifications either, and given the Bucs current cap situation and huge amount of pending free agents, would take a novel to get through. Watson would be walking into a gutted roster with limited cap. That’s if he is even able to play of course.

At the end of the day, Deshaun Watson is obviously an enticing option for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on paper. The thing is, there are a lot of huge fish in the sea this offSEAson (couldn’t help it), so it isn’t like the Buccaneers are short on options. Out of all the options though, this is the one the pirate ship should sail the farthest away from, because again, and we can’t stress this enough, WE WON’T KNOW IF OR WHEN HE CAN EVEN PLAY ANY TIME SOON.