Myles Garrett and Jameis Winston vehemently defended quarterback Deshaun Watson, who was booed by Browns fans during intros before they cheered when he was carted off the field with a likely season-ending Achilles injury.
The two players criticized the fans who appeared to be cheering over Watson’s exit on Sunday with Garrett going as far as to say that Watson had been a “model citizen” through his college and pro football career.
“With the reaction that the fans gave, whether it’s an opponent who goes down or one of our own, we don’t boo,” Garret said. “We don’t boo guys that are injured on the field, especially when the cart comes out. We should be ashamed of ourselves as Browns and as fans to boo anyone and their downfall. Could be season-altering, career-altering injury. Man is not perfect. He doesn’t need to be. None of us expect to be perfect.
“Can’t judge him for what he does off the field or on the field because I can’t throw stones from my glass house. We need to do better. We need to do better on the football field, and we need to do better as fans for having some empathy for a man who is doing the best he can and did the best he can up to this point. We have to be better.”
Watson had gone down late in the second quarter of the Browns’ loss to the Bengals when suffered the noncontact injury.
The QB had been running with the ball when he planted his left leg and the likely torn Achilles occurred, sending him to the ground quickly in pain.
He was eventually carted off the field and that’s when fans had apparently booed Watson.
“Man does pretty much everything right,” Garrett added. “A model citizen through college and also the pros. Plays the game as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen. Puts everything on the line, willing to throw his body out there. He plays the game at 100 miles an hour, and there’s a risk of being injured, and he took that risk.
“We have to be there for him as a team and as an organization. We can’t look down on a guy because of any mistakes on the field or anything off the field. We don’t have any moral high ground to look down on the guy.”
Corner back Greg Newsome did not hold back on the Cleveland fans.
“That was bulls–t. I noticed it right away,” Newsome told reporters. “No matter what you feel about a player performance wise or not, you don’t boo a guy that’s down that can’t get up by himself. That was bulls–t. Any fan that said anything, that’s bulls–t. It’s that simple. You don’t do that. Whether the guy is playing well or not, whether you’re a fan favorite, whether you’re anything you don’t boo a guy that’s sitting down. Yeah, that’s bulls–t.”
Watson has had a complicated history off the field with the Browns since arriving in Cleveland in 2022.
The quarterback has faced more than 20 lawsuits alleging sexual assault or harassment stemming from alleged inappropriate interactions with massage therapists.
Watson has just recently settled a new sexual assault lawsuit filed in September that was connected to a date that he went on in 2020, where the woman alleged that he had – among other allegations – “roughly sexually assaulted” her for “several minutes.”
On the field, Watson has fallen far short of what the Browns hoped he would bring when they opted to trade for the controversial quarterback.
Watson hasn’t recorded at least 200 passing yards once this season and he has been limited in his availability on the field for Cleveland.
Still, backup quarterback Jameis Winston gave an impassioned plea to the fans not to treat a player the way they did Watson on Sunday.
“I am very upset with the reaction to a man that has had the world against him for the past four years and he put his body and his life on the line for this city every single day,” Winston said. “Regardless of your perception, regardless of what you thought should happen with him, he committed every single day that I’ve been here to be the best that he can be for this team.”
He added: “I know you love this game, from when I first got here. I knew these were some amazing fans. But Deshaun was treated badly, and now he has to overcome another obstacle.”