The Browns and Deshaun Watson have restructured their deal in order to free up a plethora of cap space for the team.
The Cleveland Browns have largely finished setting up their 53-man roster for the start of the 2024 season, but they aren't exactly done making moves just yet. On Thursday morning, they hammered out a key piece of business with star quarterback Deshaun Watson that saw them create a ton of cap space for the upcoming season.
After the Houston Texans traded him to the Browns, Watson signed a massive five-year, $230 million deal with his new team.
However, the Browns and Watson have been constantly restructuring the deal in order to create as much salary cap as possible for themselves on a yearly basis, and they did that once again, as they reworked Watson's deal to free up over $35 million in cap space.
Browns create massive amount of cap space with Deshaun Watson move
The Browns are continuing to push money further and further down the line in their deal with Watson, but they don't seem too worried about it.
While Watson's future salary cap numbers for the 2025 and 2026 seasons come in at nearly $73 million, chances are Cleveland will just restructure the deal again in order to make sure their quarterback receives his money while also ensuring they have enough cap space to properly build the roster around him.
The timing of this move is a bit confusing, as the Browns really don't need a ton of cap space right now considering the fact that the Browns have pretty much set their roster. Of course, that could change if they were to go out and swing a trade for a guy like disgruntled San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, but that doesn't seem all that likely to happen at this point.
Some front offices like to have cap space to make moves to their roster as they see fit, and well, the Browns certainly have the space to do pretty much whatever they want throughout the regular season.
They almost certainly will not need to utilize all $62 million in cap space that they currently have available to them, but it does at least open the door for them to make some huge moves if they wanted to at some point in the future.
There's no doubt this move will help the Browns out for the time being, but it could create some issues in the future, as they are going to have to pay Watson an absurd amount of money at some point.
That point isn't today, though, and as the Browns continue to try to find a way to make a championship push with their current roster, it will be interesting to see if they put their ample cap space this year to good use.
