Former ESPN personality Michelle Beadle defended Browns fans for cheering Deshaun Watson’s season-ending injury over the weekend.
Several Browns players, including Jameis Winston and Myles Garrett, and LeBron James criticized fans for their cheering of the quarterback’s Achilles injury.
Winston and Garrett specifically went above and beyond to portray Watson as a sympathetic person.
That did not sit well with Beadle, who now hosts a daily radio show on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio, and she said during Monday’s program that she would have “cheered my ass off.”
Watson has not only failed to live up to expectations on the field since signing with the Browns, but his off-field drama has left an even larger stain on his legacy.
Watson, 29, has faced more than 20 sexual misconduct allegations and has settled most of them, including a new one that surfaced in September.
“The fans think that because they pay their money, they can do or say whatever they want out loud. That’s exactly what Deshaun Watson did,” Beadle said on air. “He did whatever he wanted, and then he paid some money to make a problem go away. I would’ve cheered my ass off. Here’s the problem, I would’ve been booing Deshaun Watson the minute they brought him to Cleveland.”
The Browns traded with the Texans for Watson in March 2022 and gave him a five-year, $230 million deal amid the sexual misconduct allegations.
“The fans were put in a garbage situation, and if you talk to a lot of Browns’ fans, they don’t like him; they never liked him. They hated the move by the organization, and they didn’t want to be forced to cheer for this person, who they don’t find to be a decent human,” Beadle said.
Watson went down late in the second quarter when his leg hyperextended during a non-contact play that sent him to the ground in pain.
The Browns QB dropped back before pivoting to a run and when he planted his left leg that is when the injury occurred.
Fans could be heard cheering the injury which resulted in a full-throated defense from Watson’s teammates, including Garrett who called the signal-caller a “model citizen.”
“I think what the Cleveland Browns players did yesterday was reprehensible,” Beadle said. “You want to stand by your dude? You can do it with minimal words. What I don’t need is for you to canonize the guy in front of cameras and microphones, and act like we’re wrong for not liking him, or we’re the world against Deshaun Watson,” Beadle said.
“The way people feel about Deshaun Watson has nothing to do with his Achilles or his play as a quarterback. It has to do everything with what he’s been accused and what he has settled with dozens of women for doing — and that’s what we know of.”
