For a second straight year, the Browns are restructuring the NFL’s most player-friendly deal. As a result, another quarterback will set the NFL record for single-player cap hit.
Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson restructure will create $35.83M in cap space, ESPN.com’s Field Yates reports. The Browns moved $44.79M of Watson’s base salary into a signing bonus. While more cap space will be available to the Browns this year, they will need much of it for carryover money because of the quarterback contract they authorized in 2022.
Watson had been set to carry a record-obliterating $63.77M cap number this season. The Browns have dropped it to $27.94M. Of course, with restructures, future cap hits spike. This will be the case here, as Thursday’s reworking inflates Watson’s 2025 and 2026 cap numbers to an astonishing $72.94M. More restructure work likely remains for a Browns team desperate to see its historically expensive trade piece take steps forward.
The Browns are now an NFL-most $51.6M under the 2024 cap, but as The Athletic’s Zac Jackson notes, they will need much of this for rollover purposes. Entering Thursday, the Browns resided ahead of only the perpetually cap-strapped Saints for projected 2025 cap space, sitting $66.9M over. Rolling most of their 2024 total to 2025 would obviously create considerable relief, but the long-term Watson ramifications remain steep for a Cleveland franchise that has not seen anything remotely close from its QB to justify the 2022 trade and extension costs.
No one has followed the Browns’ lead for guarantees; the league has deemed this an outlier contract. The Browns gave Watson a five-year, $230M fully guaranteed extension in March 2022. Nearly 2 1/2 years later, no other team has guaranteed a quarterback more than $146.5M (Joe Burrow) at signing. The Browns had previously restructured the Watson contract in March 2023, beginning a process that has seen the eighth-year passer’s future cap hits balloon.
The team remains pot-committed with Watson through 2026. The restructures, which have two void years in place as the QB’s signing bonus is now spread through 2028, would lead to a $26.8M dead money hit if Watson does not re-sign by the start of the 2027 league year. That seems manageable to a Browns team that has unimaginable — even in a world where the Broncos just took on $83M-plus in dead cap by cutting Russell Wilson — dead money figures attached to its QB in 2025 or 2026.
Cleveland has seen its QB miss 11 games in each of his two seasons, with the former Houston Pro Bowler suspended upon arrival and then battling a shoulder injury that eventually shut him down in 2023. Watson, 29 in September, did not play any preseason games and was only cleared for full work Aug. 11. The Browns shuffled their coaching staff, hiring Ken Dorsey, to better capitalize on their QB’s strengths. For the most part, those have yet to be on display post-Houston.
With this contract adjustment further tying the Browns to Watson, they will need to see notable improvement from him this season. Though, Watson’s guarantees do not exactly provide much incentive for an extreme turnaround. Dak Prescott‘s $55.13M cap hit is now in place to set the NFL record and the Cowboys appear prepared to carry that into the season.
