National Football League

The NFL's most popular phrase & what it really means

Updated Jul. 20, 2021 7:04 p.m. ET

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

Two simple words that shouldn’t really mean anything have become the most effective transactional predictors in the National Football League.

Right now.

"Right now" once meant exactly what it said on the tin: nothing more than a harmless aside, a throwaway comment and a mini-phrase Carrie Underwood used a few times to start a hit song.

No more. As things stand, "right now" — and its siblings, "at this point," "at this time" and "currently" — is a powerful hint when it comes to working out how the NFL’s annual offseason merry-go-round is going to shake out.

Deshaun Watson was the latest player to get the "right now" treatment when the unsettled Houston Texans quarterback was discussed by new head coach David Culley during a Thursday interview.

"He is our starting quarterback as of right now," Culley told the Hustle and Flow podcast. "Things happen between now and then, and then we’ll see what happens."

"Right now" has become the ultimate wink-wink phrase for coaches. It is a way of saying, "you know and I know," without admitting to knowing or stating anything in specific terms.

Watson, who has made it profoundly clear that he wants to get out of Houston, has set numerous teams around the league scrambling to put together viable trade packages for the star quarterback.

For the moment, it is in the Texans’ best interest to play a delicate game that shows they’re willing to play hardball and hold Watson to his four-year, $156 million contract while not discouraging suitors prepared to dangle valuable trade carrots.

Hence "right now."

Used in this way, whoever utters the words "right now" isn’t lying and isn’t even bending the truth but is concealing the reality of what is coming next. It is almost a kind of anti-foreshadowing, and we’re going to see it come to fruition soon enough in the case of Watson.

On Jan. 16, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay closed his media conference following the team’s playoff elimination to the Green Bay Packers by stating that Jared Goff was the Rams quarterback "right now."

Yet he wasn’t for much longer, and when the Rams detonated their Goff era and traded him plus picks to bring in Matthew Stafford from Detroit, it was easy to look back on the "right now" moment as when McVay essentially tipped his hand.

People are getting used to it. When Aaron Rodgers said after Green Bay’s NFC Championship defeat to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that things were "pretty tough right now," it was enough to have a pair of Packers beat writers believing he was saying goodbye.

In Houston, where a mess has been made of the franchise and no one’s quite sure what is going on, the sense of resignation regarding Watson is complete. An elite, young quarterback who has made three Pro Bowls by age 25 and might not yet have fully entered his prime is going to be on his way out.

"In other words, Watson is going to be traded," the Houston Chronicle’s John McClain wrote, interpreting Culley’s words.

Culley has been handed the top job in the most unfortunate of situations: His quarterback wants to leave, and franchise cornerstone J.J. Watt has already departed. Culley's comments were the first from the Texans organization on the Watson matter in weeks, and all the while, trade rumors have swirled.

"I do feel for Culley," FS1’s Nick Wright said on "First Things First." "One of the reasons he got this job is because it is such a difficult job — because of the Watson situation. A lot of people didn’t want to have to deal with moments like this. They are in a rough spot, and Culley just put a voice and a face to it."

At a later media conference, Culley, perhaps aware of the immediate reaction to his recent sound bite, made a half-hearted attempt to walk things back, but even that didn’t wash.

"He’s the only guy we have under contract," Culley added before another unwitting zinger, "at this time."

There are plenty of good reasons NFL head coaches can’t say exactly what’s on their minds at any given moment. In a sport in which competitive edge is everything, their public utterances often resemble an ongoing battle of how to say a lot without giving much away.

By the time the Watson scenario reaches its conclusion, you’d expect, he’ll be suiting up for the Miami Dolphins or the Chicago Bears or the San Francisco 49ers or a late entrant into the game.

Don’t forget, however, that as things currently stand, he is still the quarterback for the Houston Texans. Which is a little like saying that – right now – this column hasn’t ended yet.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.