{"id":213217,"date":"2025-07-17T03:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T03:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/213217\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T03:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T03:34:10","slug":"cleveland-browns-cap-situation-isnt-as-bad-as-some-think-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/213217\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleveland Browns cap situation isn’t as bad as some think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over three years ago the Cleveland Browns took the NFL by storm and came out of nowhere to make a trade for Deshaun Watson<\/a>.\u00a0 At the time the deal was announced everyone was shocked, and then the $230 fully guaranteed contract was announced, and we knew exactly why the Browns were chosen.<\/p>\n

That $230 million has since bought nine wins, two Achilles tears, and a ton of animosity among fans.\u00a0 The sentiment has also been that the Watson contract wrecked the Browns for decades because of the money spent.\u00a0 While it certainly ruined a few seasons, the Browns have already got themselves more than $17 million under the cap for the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The big number comes next year,\u00a0when the current structure of the Watson deal has a cap hit of $46 million. However<\/a>, it\u2019s fully expected that both sides will move on before the 2026 season<\/a>. The Browns will most likely take the brunt of the cap hit in 2026 for Watson\u00a0and restructure others to have a lesser impact.<\/p>\n

Stars like Denzel Ward and Myles Garrett who still have multiple years of service left will be restructured with salaries converted to bonuses and cap hits pushed down the road to future years.\u00a0 You also have guys like Wyatt Teller, Greg Newsome, and David Njoku who have the next three biggest hits on the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Teller and Newsome have both had down years and have minimal dead cap tied to them, and David Njoku has been the talk of a new contract which would allow Berry to manipulate the cap and push the bulk of his money beyond 2026.<\/p>\n

There are two major keys to this.\u00a0 One, the NFL cap is going to continue to go up.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the most popular sports in the world and the dollars keep coming in.\u00a0 Second, no matter what you think of Jimmy and Dee Haslem, they aren\u2019t afraid to spend money.\u00a0 Since 2021 they have spent the most money in the NFL<\/a> by letting Berry get creative with the cap.<\/p>\n

After three years of watching the Watson era epically fail, don\u2019t lose sleep about the cap moving forward.\u00a0 The Browns still have plenty of ways to spend money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over three years ago the Cleveland Browns took the NFL by storm and came out of nowhere…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,2337,4131,7345,563,7,7987,1304,6,582,10141],"class_list":{"0":"post-213217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-clevelandbrowns","12":"tag-david-njoku","13":"tag-denzel-ward","14":"tag-deshaun-watson","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-greg-newsome","17":"tag-myles-garrett","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-the-browns","20":"tag-wyatt-teller"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114866478415181727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}