Browns salary cap space is an important piece of the puzzle as the amount Deshaun Watson is paid stays same
The Cleveland Browns are back in the news with QB Deshaun Watson’s contract. From the moment the Browns agreed to give Watson a fully guaranteed deal, everyone has wondered how things would play out. In general, if the quarterback played well, it wouldn’t matter that they guaranteed the deal.
If Watson was bad, as he has been, it would be a huge problem that all of the money was guaranteed.
The Friday after Christmas came news that Watson had agreed to a new deal with Cleveland, one that doesn’t change the salary cap issues for the final two years of the deal but supposedly makes things less damaging on the cap after the contract expires. While we await the final details of the new deal, it seems the Browns have once again restructured Watson’s deal after doing the same in 2023 and 2024.
As fans would describe it, GM Andrew Berry has “kicked the can down the road” in regards to Watson’s salary cap hits. In reality, Berry and the organization had two choices with Watson and his contract:
- Make him “earn” his deal by raising the ships of the lesser-paid, younger players around him
- Give Watson the best team possible around him to give the best chance for team success
Cleveland’s brass obviously chose the second option leading to the restructures so that Berry could sign players like Dalvin Tomlinson and Juan Thornhill while trading for and re-signing DE Za’Darius Smith. To a lesser extent, trades for WR Elijah Moore and Jerry Jeudy were more possible due to the restructures.
In hindsight, adding talent around Watson didn’t lead to team success with the highly paid quarterback but did help Joe Flacco lead the team to the NFL playoffs in 2023.
Even if the Browns had not restructured Watson’s original deal, the team would still be dealing with large salary cap hits in the final two years of his deal. Berry’s big contracts all push salary cap hits later in the deal and include void year(s) to do the same.
In the end, Cleveland had to account for $230 million in salary cap hits one way or another. Either they allowed it to come out each year at higher rates and limited their spending in free agency or they restructured the contract to use more cap space in free agency. Pushing the cap space later also takes up a smaller percentage of the salary cap which is one way to account for Watson’s hit in a cheaper way.
In the end, the bet the Browns made when they traded for Watson and signed him to the massive guaranteed deal didn’t work out. The team decided to do everything they could to make it work with restructures to open up free agency options and are now being creative in accounting for the $230 million in cap hits in the future.