Bengals should embrace Browns fans jumping ship after Deshaun Watson trade

The 2022 season hasn’t even started yet, but the Cincinnati Bengals already have an obvious advantage over the Cleveland Browns: their quarterback isn’t named Deshaun Watson.

In fact, a deep dive on Joe Burrow shows he’s one of the most upstanding guys on and off the field — go ahead and try to find dirt on Burrow. We’ll wait.

If Burrow is the baby-faced angel of the AFC North, the two-faced devil is….yup, Deshaun Watson. Also known as the man accused and sued by 22 women of sexual assault.

After the Browns announced the franchise would acquire Watson on Friday, giving him a five-year, $230 million dollar deal in which the full $230 million is guaranteed, Cleveland fans rightfully started to distance themselves from the franchise.

Some fans even thought about jumping ship and swimming to Cincinnati instead, which given the circumstances, seems like a very proportionate response.

Cincinnati Bengals welcome disgruntled Browns fans with open arms in 2022

Those fans may be in for a surprise when they find out what Bengals running back Joe Mixon has done in his shady past…

Given how much the Browns fanbase has suffered in the past, the Bengals should nonetheless take the high road and open their gates to those traumatized fans.

Following the Watson trade, the Cleveland Rape Crisis issued a statement reinforcing their commitment to fostering a safe community, and the center has since received more than 1,000 donations.

Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski also issued a statement regarding the trade which talks about the organization’s “extensive” evaluation process that led them to acquire Watson. The TLDR message of that is: Watson is too good a quarterback to pass up on regardless of his questionable ethics.

At one point in his career, Watson would have been considered a top-5 quarterback, and in his last season in Houston he threw for 4,823 yards and 33 touchdowns. Time will tell if Watson can perform as well as he has in the past, but what time will not do is heal the permanently severed relationship between the Cleveland Browns and their fans.

Leave that toxic dumpster fire of a franchise and come to the Queen City. We’re not perfect, but we’re definitely not as problematic.