Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson shared in an Instagram post Friday that his father has died, two days before the Browns’ Week 1 opener against the Dallas Cowboys. Further details were not immediately available on the death of Watson’s father, Don Richardson, nor how it affects Watson’s status for Cleveland’s first game of the season.
“Rest in Peace Pops,” read a short message from Watson.
Watson spent much of his life estranged from his father, who abandoned the family when he was young and left mother, Deann Watson, to raise him as well as three siblings. In 2017, Watson told the Houston Chronicle that he only remembered seeing his father “maybe five” times growing up in Gainesville, Georgia.
“My mom was basically my mother and father, so I didn’t really pay too much attention to it,” Watson said at the time. “My friends had fathers. But for me it was just, ‘Hey, my mother is the one I’m going to rely on and I’m always going to focus on.’ ”
Watson, a former Pro Bowler and National Championship-winning quarterback at Clemson, is in a pivotal year in his career after suffering a broken bone in his throwing shoulder midway through the 2023 season. Despite becoming one of the biggest stars in the NFL early in his career, Watson has played in just 12 games since the 2020 season following a saga that saw him sit out the 2021 season after becoming disaffected with the Houston Texans before being suspended for much of the 2022 season due to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. .
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