Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson has formally requested to be traded from the team. Watson was drafted by the Texans in 2017 and has had a very successful career. He has been a 3-time pro-bowl selection and led the NFL in passing yards this past season. However, now that he is becoming a veteran, his focus has shifted towards wanting to be a part of a winning organization. He has lost confidence in Texans’ upper management and has been frustrated with their decisions for quite some time now. One of the most significant being that they traded their wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who is arguably the best receiver in the NFL and now plays for the Arizona Cardinals. Watson believes that his time in Houston has come to its end, although Texans general manager Nick Caserio said they have no interest in trading him. 

Watson is reportedly willing to sit out an entire season and unwilling to ever play for the Texans again. This puts pressure on the organization to find a trade destination for him, and it shows how much more control players are becoming of their own destiny. Players are now more empowered than ever to leave if they feel an organization isn’t doing their job. This is the kind of empowerment we need in professional sports with players of color, especially those in the National Football League. This is the  influence needed in order to continue to bring about attention to issues involving social justice. When Colin Kaepernick kneeled for the national anthem, the NFL blackballed him and people said that he was disrespectful. Now years later, with all the gross miscarriages of justice that have transpired, he is now considered an icon for social justice. Kaepernick has now paved the way for future NFL players to use their status to bring about social change. 

The tide is now changing for elite professional athletes, and they are now in more control than ever to hold management accountable. Management of professional sports organizations now have to consider their best players before they decide because if they don’t, players will leave them, and be open about it. This was never the case before because players were supposed to remain silent and play while management was supposed to manage, but now players are starting to have more power. Lots of sports experts believe that this trend started with Lebron James making “The Decision” to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers to join the Miami Heat in 2010. At the time, lots of coaches and analysts were unhappy with the way he went about letting the world know. However, years from now, this will be considered the landmark event that started to make players think for themselves and take their futures into their own hands. 

This is what Black athletes have imagined since the days of Curt Flood challenging Major League Baseball in what opened the door for free agency as we know it. Owners can no longer treat players as cattle and expect them to just “shut up and dribble.” The message is loud and clear: athletes will hold organizations to a higher standard, and it’s about time.