The comfortable thing might be to find a way to move on soon, give Culley a fresh start with a healthier quarterback room and make the Watson story someone else’s issue. So looking at that landscape, if you’re Caserio, what do you do?
On the other, Watson does have some control over this, via the no-trade clause he secured in the four-year, $156 million extension he signed less than a year ago.
On one hand, I don’t think Watson’s preference being Miami gives the Dolphins any sort of advantage, or leverage, in working to land the quarterback.What I’ve heard is vaguer than that-three first-round picks as a starting point, with additional compensation on top of that-but does match up with Robinson’s information. On Saturday, Yahoo’s Charles Robinson reported that the Texans’ price is three first-rounders and a pair of second-rounders.I haven’t gotten any indication that the Texans are willing to tie their return to those sorts of contingencies. Since, some teams I talked to that were interested at the time, and some that remain interested now, have only been willing to entertain a deal that gives them protections by making the draft-pick compensation conditional (with conditions linked to his availability to play).(Watson has denied any wrongdoing.) And while the language the Texans were using publicly had shifted-from “he’s our quarterback” to “we’ll do what’s best for the team”-by then, the market for Watson had changed dramatically.
On April 2, a police investigation was launched. By the end of the month, the number grew to 21.