<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you missed last week’s <em>Thursday Night Football</em> tilt between the Steelers and Browns, don’t grieve. The game itself was inessential, and Amazon Prime’s coverage of the game all but incentivized the audience to do anything else with its evening. That’s because Amazon’s broadcast team decided to treat Browns QB Deshaun Watson, a proven and unrepentant <a href="https://defector.com/tag/deshaun-watson">menace to women</a>, with the kind of soft-focus treatment usually reserved for diabetic Olympians. Watson was feted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkx49ZGlj2A">in the pregame show</a>, during <a href="https://awfulannouncing.com/nfl/al-michaels-kirk-herbstreit-simplistic-evaluation-deshaun-watson-comeback.html">the main telecast</a>, and <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/aaronschatz.com/post/3mwuhkuyrwk2e">even in the postgame</a>. Under normal circumstances, this coverage would have been vile. In the wake of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/nyregion/cornell-men-university-discipline.html">Cornell rape scandal</a> that has become national news, it’s somehow even more galling. There’s a way to talk about Watson, and the 3-1 Browns, without stooping lower than hell’s seventh circle. So Arif Hasan and I endeavored to do just that on this week’s episode of <em>All Ball</em>.</p>
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Thankfully, there’s more. As our newborn show continues its steady development into becoming an elite podcast, we have tweaked the format of <em>All Ball</em> by <em>rating</em> every game, throwgasm-style, instead of blithely picking it. We also made sure to carve out ample time to make fun of the strugggggling Eagles, talk up the surprisingly awesome Jaguars, and attempt to make sense of the undefeated but offense-less Vikings. All of that was WAYYYYY more fun to talk about than Deshaun Watson, lemme tell ya.</p>