If Deshaun Watson talks his way out of Houston, the Miami Dolphins should talk their way to the front of the line.
Trade Tua Tagovailoa. Trade the No 3 draft pick. Throw in both second-rounders this year and also a fourth-rounder next year just to pretty it up like a full flower arrangement.
If Houston is dumb enough to allow Watson to leave, the Dolphins should take advantage of them for a dumb-to-dumber second time recently.
Trade Tua, the No 3 pick, a second-rounder and the first-round pick next year to make it a full box of chocolates.
Watson is everything you hope Tagovailoa quickly becomes. He’s 25. He’s one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks. He’s signed for a moderate price through 2025. He was on a 4-12 team this year and ranked as the NFL’s second-best quarterback behind Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.
Oh, and one more thing.
He’s really unhappy.
“Some things never change,’’ Watson tweeted this week after Houston owner Cal McNair hired Nick Caserio as general manager.
The issue, it seems, is Watson wasn’t consulted on the hire. Maybe it is Caserio’s New England background, too. Fired coach Bill O’Brien and another front-office type, Jack Easterby, were also from Bill Belichick University.
Yes, Dolphins coach Brian Flores graduated from the same school. But his management style, if it matters, is noticeably different than Belichick, who rules by fear. Flores rules by building relationships with players. “They’re like my sons,’’ he has said on different occasions.
Back to Watson.
“We need a whole culture shift,” Watson said at the end of the season when he unloaded on the Houston franchise. “We need new energy. We need discipline. We need structure. We need a leader so we can follow that leader as players.”
Isn’t that Flores in a paragraph?
“I’m not sure what exactly the ownership wants to do, but whoever it is has got to come in with a great structure and plan and making sure we’re accountable for every action. We’re all striving to go for one goal, and that’s raising that [Lombardi] trophy.”
Again, doesn’t that sound like Flores’ Way?
The cold-water reality is Houston would be nuts to trade Watson no matter how unhappy he is. The Dolphins once had an unhappy quarterback who wanted out. They went through the behind-the-scenes motions of trading Dan Marino after the 1988 season but never did so.
Name the last top-tier quarterback to be traded in his prime. Hmm. Well. There has to be someone. Drew Brees leaving San Diego in 2006? Sure, except he was a free agent, he had a career-threatening injury and San Diego had Philip Rivers waiting behind him.
The Dolphins sound like they won’t go the San Diego Way of insuring Tua with another highly drafted quarterback. They sound like the surprisingly wonderful Ryan Fitzpatrick years have played themselves out on both sides, too.
They sound like their backup quarterback next year will be some journeyman with neither the game nor the team-winning personality of Fitzpatrick or a third-round pick who will need a year or three of clipboard carrying. Bottom-line: They want a quarterback who is no threat to Tagovailoa’s standing either in practice where players could notice or in the games where everyone else would. That’s not unusual, either. They’re all in on their guy.
The Watson situation is unusual. Franchise quarterbacks rarely speak out against the franchise. They rarely express such discontent about the owner that it makes headlines. They rarely try to talk their way out of town.
They also rarely have any say in the next general manager. But Watson stood on the deck of the Titanic last season as McNair empowered coach Bill O’Brien to make dumb move after dumb move. He then fired O’Brien and now brings in Caserio.
Do the Texans have one more dumb move in them?
Because there’s only one thing more nuts than Houston actually trading their franchise quarterback. It’s the Dolphins not standing at the front of the line with a basket full of goodies to pry him away.
Deshaun Watson of the Houston Texans scrambles with the ball against the Indianapolis Colts during the first half if their NFL game at NRG Stadium in Houston on December 6, 2020. (Getty Images/TNS)
