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By Sam Neumann on

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Prime Video spent most of Thursday night treating Deshaun Watson’s season as a redemption story, and by the postgame show, Tony Gonzalez was ready to write the happy ending.

Between Taylor Rooks pressing Watson on the skepticism Browns fans still feel toward him and Al Michaels waving off “the whole Deshaun Watson thing” as a story everyone already knows, Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football coverage had already devoted considerable airtime to how the public ought to regard the Browns quarterback. And after Cleveland’s 27-24 win over Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Gonzalez weighed in on the postgame show, lauding Watson for the obstacles he’s overcome both on and off the field.

“You can’t say enough about the shot, and we talked about it in the pregame show,” Gonzalez said. “The adversity that he’s gone through on the field, off the field, everybody doubting him, the home crowd right here, they’re gonna be cheering him from here on out. But the stuff that he’s gone through, you have to take your hat off to him and say wow, because he looks fantastic.”

The Hall of Fame tight end stopped short of declaring Watson fully restored to the form that made him one of the league’s most dynamic quarterbacks in Houston, but said he was trending in that direction and called his resurgence one of the biggest stories in the NFL.

“This is a very good football team, but Deshaun Watson, to me, man, I’m so proud and happy,” Gonzalez concluded.

As you might imagine, Gonzalez’s framing of Watson as a man who had triumphed over hardship didn’t exactly go over well with the masses, who bristled at the idea of tipping their caps to the quarterback and took particular issue with the suggestion that he was somehow the victim of his own story.

In case we need a reminder, more than two dozen women, many of them massage therapists, accused Watson of sexual misconduct in civil lawsuits, and all 27 of those suits have since been settled or dismissed, the last of them only this past February. After an independent disciplinary officer initially recommended a six-game suspension in 2022, the NFL appealed, and Watson ultimately agreed to an 11-game ban, a $5 million fine, and mandatory professional evaluation and treatment, months after the Browns had traded for him and handed him a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract.

Describing that chapter as “adversity” reframes allegations against Watson as a burden he was forced to carry, rather than conduct he was accused of inflicting on others, and it leaves the women who came forward with those accusations completely out of the story.

Unfortunately, Thursday is far from the only time Prime Video has taken up Watson’s cause. When Watson and the Browns first appeared on the streamer during the preseason, Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit used their national platform to champion the quarterback’s “second chance.” Michaels described the lawsuits as the moment Watson’s career got “all turned around,” while Herbstreit highlighted the charitable work Watson did early in his Houston tenure.

On Thursday, Michaels leaned on the familiar refrain that winning is the best deodorant, and Herbstreit assured viewers the boos would turn to cheers if Watson kept moving the chains.

Not everyone on Prime’s coverage took that approach, however. Earlier in the broadcast, the streamer aired Rooks’ sit-down interview with Watson, which stood apart from the rest of the night. Rooks offered the night’s lone attempt to grapple with why so many people remain uneasy about Watson, asking him point-blank whether he understood the apprehension Browns fans feel. Even then, Watson responded by describing the world “flipping against” him, positioning himself as the aggrieved party.

Hours later, Gonzalez’s postgame remarks echoed that framing almost word for word.

Covering Watson’s resurgence doesn’t require pretending his past never happened, and it doesn’t require celebrating him either. But declaring yourself “proud and happy” for him, and suggesting he deserves admiration for everything he’s “gone through,” is an endorsement — and one Prime Video’s studio would have been better off keeping to itself.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann