Ben Watson Explains Coming Out Of Retirement And Joining New England Patriots

Fellow tight ends Daniel Graham and Christian Fauria caught passes from Tom Brady the same night Ben Watson made his NFL debut.

It was Sept. 9, 2004 against the Indianapolis Colts. And it’d be the only game that Benjamin Watson, the No. 32 overall pick in that year’s draft, would play as a New England Patriots rookie due to a torn ACL.

The New England Patriots signed Watson to a one-year deal earlier this May that includes a $600,000 signing bonus, $300,000 in cumulative per-game roster bonuses, $650,000 in incentives and a base salary of $1.45 million. All totaled, a cap number of $3 million.

“Part of it was I was retried. I was done. I wasn’t even a free agent. I was done, off the books for a couple of months,” Watson told reporters following New England’s OTA session on Thursday, via WEEI.com. “I was considering other opportunities moving forward to different occupations. And talking to my wife, talking to the kids and family. Probably right around late April, early May, I started to think, ‘Maybe, let’s just see if there’s an opportunity to play one more year. Once you’re done, you’re done. Maybe there’s an opportunity to do one more.’

“And I said I really didn’t want to go — I didn’t want to go to the west coast. I didn’t want to go anywhere crazy. I wanted to go somewhere I knew people, somewhere I felt my family would excel and do well. I would have loved to stay in New Orleans or come somewhere in New England where I knew people. So, New England offered and reached out and said there was an interest there. We definitely thought it was a good thing. Thought it would be a good fit.”

“It’s quite different as to be expected,” he said. “Josh [McDaniels] has been here, he’s left, he’s come back. There have been different offensive coaches, different players that have been here, and sometimes you cater to your personnel. So, things might change. The terminology has to change because obviously after time, defenses aren’t dumb. And they pick up on what the quarterback’s saying, so they change. So, offensively, we have to change terms and stuff like that. There are a lot of different terms. There are a lot of different formations, terminology. There are some carryover, a little bit, but so far it has been a process of learning a lot of new stuff, which is good.”