The journey that Mississippi State linebacker Nathaniel Watson took to become the Cleveland Browns’ sixth-round pick (No. 206 overall) began with a projection.
“I think it was a really unique assessment and good job by our recruiting department and our coaching staff that Bookie (Waton’s nickname, pronounced ‘BOO-kee’) played very little, if any, defense in high school,” Joe Moorhead, who was the coach at Mississippi State at the time, recalled in a phone interview Sunday with the Beacon Journal. “He was a tight end, a wide out and was really a pure projection on the other side of the ball. What stood out most was his size, his length and his athleticism, and we felt like he would make a great college linebacker.”
Moorhead has since moved to the University of Akron, where he is in his third season as head coach. However, he was a freshman at Starkville when he ventured to Maplesville, Alabama — population 637 — to recruit Watson, one of Irene Granson’s five children.
Browns area scout Matt Donahoe described Watson after he was drafted as a “country boy who loves to play football.” The college football coach who took him to Mississippi State, however, recalled how his initial interaction with Watson was very different from what became routine between the two once they became familiar.
“He comes from a very small town in Alabama,” Moorhead said. “His mom has obviously done a phenomenal job raising Bookie. When you first meet him, he seems a little reserved, with short one- and two-word answers. As you get to know him and gain his trust, he’s incredibly engaging, a great communicator and really just a fun kid to be around and that his teammates like.”
Moorhead was actually doing the second sales job in the state of Mississippi for Watson. The No. 19 player from the state of Alabama had originally committed to the Bulldogs, but that was while Dan Mullen was the head coach.
However, when Mullen became the head coach at SEC rival Florida, Mississippi State hired Moorhead, who had been the offensive coordinator at Penn State. Which meant a whole new coaching staff for Watson to learn from, and a whole new group of potential recruits for Moorhead to do the same.
Moorhead, however, remembers coming away impressed by both Watson the person and Watson the player on that visit.
“I remember doing a home visit and arriving and just, there’s a sort of thought process in recruitment that you can assess, to some extent, the kind of person a young man is from a character point of view, by the way he “He’s a very super respectful kid, and like I said, from the interactions he had with his mom, who once again is a phenomenal lady, you can tell he was a kid who did the right things.”
There were questions throughout the draft process surrounding some red flags in Watson’s past. One of those was an arrest last May on suspicion of drunk driving.
However, the other occurred in February of his senior year of high school, when Watson was charged with first-degree felonious assault and traffic violations. The accusations resulted from a drag racing incident This resulted in, according to the Maplesville Police Department’s statement, “an oncoming car caused (Watson) to swerve and lose control, striking a utility pole, cutting it in half and cutting power to portions of Maplesville.”
Another student in Watson’s car, according to the police statement, “had a crushed femur, fractured pelvis, broken right arm and internal injuries. He was airlifted to UAB for treatment.”
Moorhead was asked about this incident. He interrupted the questioner before the question was finished.
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“I’m going to throw this out there before you even start,” Moorhead said. “I remember the event. I don’t have many memories of it, but the process unfolded and it was really a failure for us. It wasn’t anything that changed our opinion of him as a person or affected his ability to play for our program.”
What ended up having an impact were normal things that affect playing time, like simple development or players ahead of someone on the depth chart. In Watson’s first two seasons, there were definitely players ahead of him that limited him to just nine games in the 2018-19 seasons.
Specifically, this group included Leo Lewis, Erroll Thompson, and Willie Gay. Gay recently signed with the New Orleans Saints after four seasons and two Super Bowl wins with the Kansas City Chiefs, while the other two at least had NFL experience after college.
“You knew he wasn’t going to come in right away and be an immediate contributor because there’s a learning curve not only with not playing defense but playing defense in the SEC,” Moorhead said. “So it was good for him to be able to come in, learn from two guys who were in the NFL now… Even though he didn’t know much about playing defensive football, you put him out there and in the scrimmages and on the scout team the first year, he was a very instinctive football and I think that comes from knowing a lot about the game.”
Moorhead, however, would not be around to see the fruits of this learning. After the Bulldogs lost to Louisville in the Music City Bowl late in the 2019 season, he was fired and eventually became the offensive coordinator at Oregon.
Meanwhile, Watson would prove the projections were correct. He would play 48 games, including 39 starts, over the next four seasons, recording 374 tackles, 34 tackles for loss, 21 sacks, three forced fumbles, seven passes defended and two interceptions.
Over the past two seasons combined, Watson has had 250 total tackles, 25 tackles for loss, 16 sacks, two forced fumbles and one interception. He led the SEC in tackles (137) and sacks (10) last season.
“We knew this was going to happen,” Moorhead said. “We knew it wouldn’t be the first year. We knew he would contribute a little bit in the second year. But in terms of long-term projection, we thought, this is a guy who looks like he could be very, very productive. SEC linebacker and will have the opportunity to play at the next level.
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal: Nathaniel Watson’s promise was evident to Joe Moorhead in the draft
