Deshaun Watson found a new home in Cleveland, but here are three reasons he was never a realistic option for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As a Steelers fan, I can imagine the reaction that Steelers Nation had collectively as news broke that Deshaun Watson was signing with the Cleveland Browns. Many fans on social media were banging the table for Pittsburgh to make a move for the young franchise quarterback, but moods immediately shifted when he joined our division rival.
To be fair, it would have been really out of their element for the Steelers to make a blockbuster trade of this magnitude, but there are other reasons why Kevin Colbert and the organization weren’t going to trade for Watson. Here are three of them:
Steelers weren’t going to mess with the legal situation
I can assure you that Deshaun Watson’s legal situation is something that Art Rooney II was not about to get mixed up in. This is even after Watson was acquitted. He knows the drama that this team once went through with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger once upon a time when he was accused of sexual assault.
In fact, a report recently came out that Steelers had a trade offer in place that would have shipped Ben to San Francisco in 2009, but 49ers head coach Mike Singeltary ultimately vetoed the deal.
Perhaps the organization pondered trading for a player with a clean off-field record like Russell Wilson, but Deshaun Watson was never on the table for this reason. The Steelers weren’t about to take any chances to get themselves mixed up on something that could reflect poorly upon them.