By David Barron

I can’t claim to have any particularly detailed insight on the personality and character of J.J. Watt, who Friday said that he has played his final game for the Houston Texans. As a fringe contributor to the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of the Texans, my closest encounter with Watt came in December 2017, when he and Jose Altuve flew to New York to receive the Sportspersons of the Year award from Sports Illustrated.

Watt appeared the night before the awards ceremony on NBC’s “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” for the official announcement of the honor. I was in the audience for the show, and somewhere in cyberspace there exists pixels of me exchanging a high five with Fallon as he ran through the audience after the show. I mean, what could I do? Fallon was high-fiving everybody, and I was seated on the aisle.

I had a 10-minute or so conversation with Watt the next night at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn before the televised SI awards presentation show. Along with his charity work in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we mostly discussed what he and his girlfriend, Kealia Ohai, to whom he was married in 2020, did on their day together in Manhattan, visiting the 9/11 Memorial.

I also recall discussing with him the rare ability he had to connect with people of all generations. A lot of it was learned skill, a product of the media relations training that players receive in college and the pros, but I don’t doubt that training was secondary to what came from the heart.

When it comes to sports, as you certainly know by now, we root most of the time for laundry, that being the uniform of our favorite teams. Watt, in his decade in Houston, became one of the few who became more than the shirt on his back. Last names were superfluous. He was J.J.

Because of his skill, his knack for making the theatrically big play at the right moment and the goodwill he engendered by his interaction with fans and with those in need, Watt arguably has outgrown the sluggishly rebuilding team for which he played with such distinction. Even with reduced production in the wake of recurring injuries, he’s been better than the surrounding cast that this year struggled to a 4-12 finish.

His departure, via his announcement Friday that he has asked for and been granted his release from the Texans, follows the departure from Houston in recent months of receiver DeAndre Hopkins, linebacker Jadaveon Clowney, coach Bill O’Brien, media relations director Amy Palcic and, earlier this week, president for business operations Jamey Rootes. Preceding them all, of course, was the November 2018 death of team founder Bob McNair, and pending is the expected departure of quarterback Deshaun Watson.

I was not always comfortable with certain elements of the Texans culture, including its Year Zero attitude that Houston pro football history began with the Texans’ launch in 2002 (although, to be fair, the team has honored past greats as part of its Gridiron Legends program through the Texas Bowl game, and it is a fact that the Houston Oilers’ history, at least officially, belongs to the Tennessee Titans).

But I’m of a later generation, blessed and cursed with pre-2002 memories. By contrast, for many Houston sports fans, the Texans are the only NFL franchise they have known. They’ve grown up rooting for the liberty white, battle red and deep steel blue colors and for the Toro the Bull mascot and for the likes of Watt, Clowney, Hopkins, Watson and others.

With Watt’s departure, in the same fashion as George Springer’s departure from the Houston Astros, this will be a fundamentally different Texans franchise. Skepticism is the order of the day for the likes of managing owner Cal McNair, general manager Nick Caserio and the shadow lurking behind the throne, Jack Easterby.

Regardless of where you stand along the generational divide, though, the collective gloom Friday matches the weather forecast. On this day, Texans laundry looks pretty dingy.