Chad Johnson Isn’t Convinced by the Bucs Cutting Desmond Watson Over Conditioning Issues

Desmond Watson has always been a big boy. In peewee football, he was often called a giant. By his junior year at Armwood High School, he was already 375 pounds, heavier than any defensive tackle in the NFL at that time. And he’s only gotten bigger since then.

With his massive size, Watson was able to dominate. He was a four-star recruit in 2021 and weighed 440 pounds when he enrolled at Florida that year. He managed to get his weight down to 400 pounds by the start of his freshman season.

However, Watson slowly but surely ballooned back up, and by the end of his fourth and final year with the Gators, he tipped the scale at 464 pounds. Nonetheless, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took a chance on the big fella. They didn’t use a draft pick on him (no one did), but they signed the Plant City, Florida native as an undrafted free agent.

The agreement between Watson and the team was that he’d reach a specific weight goal before he was allowed to practice. Unfortunately, he never reached that threshold. He remained on the ‘active/non-football injury’ list all summer and was cut this week by the Bucs.

However, former NFL All-Pro WR Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson—among many others—believes the Tampa Bay brass severely mishandled the Watson situation.

“I would have liked for them to allow him to play and see how he plays at the size he’s at now,” Johnson said on an episode of Nightcap.

“He played at that size at Florida, so I understand what you guys are trying to do for safety reasons. But it’s how he played at Florida. So why draft him if you’re not gonna allow him to play the game of football? Why not let him chase his childhood dream? Why put him through the ringer like that?”

To his credit, Watson did lose some weight during his four-month stint with the Bucs. He was down to 449 pounds by the time he was cut, but obviously that was not the target weight he’d agreed upon with the team. But Ochocinco makes a good point: Watson played a full season with Florida last year at that weight. Why not give him a chance to show if he can play that heavy during the preseason?

Shannon Sharpe, Ochocinoc’s co-host on the Nightcap podcast, believes Watson would have to be big to have success in the NFL. He is 6’6″ and wide after all, so that’s a big frame to fill out. Sharpe argued that pushing Watson below 400 pounds would have made it hard for him to have an impact. Ochocinco, it turns out, wasn’t even aware that Watson had been above 400 this whole time.

“Sharpe: He’s 6’5″! He’s only gonna get so small through diet and exercise. I mean, 6’5″? You’re not gonna get him to 350. Because if you get him to 350, he can’t play football. Because you’ve taken all his strength away!
Ochocinoco: Wait, how much does Vita Vea weigh?
Sharpe: Vita Vea probably 350.
Ochocinco: So, Desmond Watson’s what 365?
Sharpe: 450.
Ochocinco: Oh sh*t.”

Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles spoke about the Watson decision, saying that it’s pretty hard for someone to make the team if they haven’t practiced. While that’s true, it doesn’t hold the same weight if the team doesn’t let the player practice whatsoever.

Nonetheless, Bowles said, “the door is not closed on him,” and, “we’ll see where we are in a couple of weeks and we’ll circle back and then we’ll go from there,” so Watson’s dream isn’t dead yet.

But it’s hard to see how the big fella could lose more weight on his own than he did with the support system the Bucs had in place.