Texans, Dolphins won’t do Deshaun Watson deal - NBC Sports

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Last week, they were closing in on getting it done. This week, the Dolphins have pulled the plug.

According to Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (i.e., the Dolphins specifically selected him to receive the leaked announcement), the Dolphins won’t trade for Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson.

Here’s his tweet: “Although the Dolphins did due diligence on Deshaun Watson and had conversations with Houston, Miami will not make a trade for the QB, per source. Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross, who had contingencies that needed to be met for any deal, made the final decision to not move forward.”

(I thought Ross didn’t make football decisions. Oh wait, that was and is and always will be BS, whenever any owner tries to say it.)

What Schefter doesn’t say is that the “contingencies” were settlements of the 22 civil lawsuits. Watson was only going to settle the cases if a trade happened. Since there’s no settlement, there’s no trade.

Schefter adds this: “While Miami considered bringing in Deshaun Watson, no deal ever was in place and the Dolphins will stick with Tua Tagovailoa, a young QB who has shown improvement this year.”

Of course no deal was in place; otherwise, it would have been done. Last week, the two sides were close. As PFT has reported, once the Texans caught wind of the possibility of a settlement of the cases, the Texans drove up the price, and the talks cratered.

As explained on Sunday’s Football Night in America, a trade and the settlement went hand in hand. Although the Dolphins can try to make it look like Ross took a stand on principle, if the Texans and Dolphins had reached a deal, Watson would have gotten the cases settled. They didn’t, so he didn’t. And now Watson will continue to get paid by the Texans to not play.

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