Transcript: Nick Mansour on the release of Deshaun Watson

The team put a 3:00 p.m. availability on the schedule at 11:40 that morning and did not say what it was for. By one o’clock there were three national crews in the hallway and a fourth setting up a live position in the parking lot in twenty-eight degrees. Chairs were added twice and people stood anyway. Beat writers who have covered this franchise for twenty years were standing at the back wall. The transaction moved on the wire at 2:51, nine minutes before he came in, and most of the room read it off their phones at the same time. Then it went quiet, which is not what a press room does when news breaks. He walked in at 3:02 with one page in his hand and nobody from the organization next to him.

MANSOUR: I’m going to read the first part because I want the words to be right.

This afternoon the Cleveland Browns released Deshaun Watson.

I believe the women. There are more than two dozen of them. They came forward separately and they describe the same conduct. I think he is a rapist.

I had nothing to do with 2022 and I’m not going to take credit for hindsight. But the people who ran this organization traded three first-round picks for that man, and then guaranteed every dollar of that contract, specifically so that anything anybody found out later could never cost him a cent. That was disgusting. It was disgusting when they did it. People in this city said so out loud at the time and were told they didn’t understand football.

I was hired to change what this organization is. This is the first thing.

Okay. Questions.

(Nobody asked one for about four seconds.)

Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comIs any part of this a football decision? The cap, the quarterback position, the fact that you have two young quarterbacks who need snaps?

MANSOUR: No. And I’m going to say no to that every time it’s asked, because if this gets written up as a roster move then it isn’t what I just said it was.

He is not off this team because of his arm or his age or his cap number. He is off this team because of what he did. If he were the best quarterback in the National Football League it would be the same.

Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanWhose decision was this, and when was it made?

MANSOUR: Mine. I recommended it to Grant Greyson yesterday, a couple of hours after the press conference you were all at. It went to his family last night. It was signed this morning and the paperwork went in at two.

National reporter · NFL NetworkThis is the largest dead-money charge any team has ever taken on one player, by a wide margin. Doing it in March instead of January would have cost materially less. Can you justify the timing?

MANSOUR: Not on those terms, no.

You’ve all got the number and it is the biggest anybody has ever taken on one man and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I know exactly what waiting would have saved, to the dollar, because I looked it up before I said a word to anybody. I recommended January with that figure in front of me and I’d recommend it again if it were twice as much.

The Greysons didn’t ask for a night to think about it. This is a position that family held in public in 2022, when they had no way to act on it and nothing to gain by saying it. They paid for it in about four hours.

Tony Grossi · ESPN ClevelandI’m sure the people who made that trade are just distraught about all this. Have you heard from any of them? Anybody call you today?

MANSOUR: No. I don’t have their numbers and I don’t imagine they’d have much to say to me. I’d take the call.

National reporter · Yahoo SportsYou called what the previous ownership did disgusting. Is that what this is, then? One organization correcting one organization’s decision?

MANSOUR: That’s the easier version and I don’t think it’s the true one.

This league has tolerated misogyny and sexual misconduct and domestic violence for far too long. It is not one franchise’s failure and it did not start here in 2022. Cleveland did an unusually expensive version of a thing that goes on everywhere, and everybody in this sport has known it the whole time. That includes me.

National reporter · ESPNCan you expand on that? Are you talking about the league office, the clubs, the union? What specifically?

MANSOUR: It’s a fair thing to want and I’m going to say no to it.

I said it once and I said all of it, it’s on every recorder in this room, and you can run every word of it. If I stand here and say it again in better sentences it becomes a thing I’m doing.

Albert Breer · Sports IllustratedI want to ask this one carefully. Two grand juries, in two counties, declined to indict him. He was never charged with a crime and never convicted of one. The league ran its own investigation and its disciplinary officer, a former federal judge, made the findings she made and imposed the discipline she imposed. You have just stood at a podium and used a word that carries a legal meaning about a man no court has found guilty of anything. What is your answer to somebody who thinks a football coach has no business making that call from up there?

MANSOUR: Yeah.

I’m not a court and I’m not pretending to be one. A grand jury declining to indict is not a finding that nothing happened. It means a prosecutor didn’t get enough of that grand jury to agree there was enough to charge. Those are two different things and they get treated like one thing. I’ve read the filings. He settled with nearly all of them. I’m allowed to read all of that and decide what I think, the same way you are and the same way everybody in this room has decided what they think about a great many things nobody was ever charged with.

The part I’d push on is the idea that I’ve done something to him. I haven’t put anybody in prison. I’ve decided that a company I’m responsible for is not going to employ him. That is a decision an employer gets to make, and this employer made the opposite one in 2022 and called it football.

People are going to disagree with me about this for a long time. I’m not asking them not to.

National reporter · ESPNTwo days ago nobody outside a small corner of the internet knew who you were. You’re going to be on every network in the country tonight. Do you expect to be praised for this?

MANSOUR: Probably, yeah. I think that’s going to happen and I don’t have a way to hand it back.

I thought about it before I walked in here. I’d be lying to you if I said I hadn’t. It isn’t a reason not to do it, and I’m also not going to stand here and tell you I’m above it, because I don’t know that I am.

Zac Jackson · The AthleticYesterday in this room you said you wouldn’t characterize a player you hadn’t met. Today you called one a rapist.

MANSOUR: Conduct isn’t performance. I’m not going to say a word about how anybody plays football, and I didn’t just now.

(He pointed to the back of the room.)

Cleveland televisionHave you spoken to the players? This is a locker room that has been answering for that man for four years.

MANSOUR: I called about fifteen guys this morning before it went out, because nobody should find out about their own team off a phone. I got most of them. Two I couldn’t reach and I’ll be calling tonight until I do.

I’m not going to tell you what any of them said to me. Some of those guys have been standing at their lockers answering questions about this since they were rookies, and none of that was their job.

National reporter · Associated PressSo where does that leave the quarterback position? Do you have a starter on this roster right now?

MANSOUR: I’ll answer that any other day of the year. You can ask me every week and I’ll be here. I’m not doing it today.

Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comDid you talk to him?

MANSOUR: I did. This morning, before anybody else. That part stays between us.

(He said thank you and stepped back from the podium. A reporter in the second row was in the middle of a question and kept asking it. He did not take it. Nobody from the organization came to the microphone after him, and the room did not clear for several minutes. The availability ran eleven minutes.)

“I think he is a rapist.”