When it comes to arguably the single-worst transaction in NFL history, the Browns keep kicking the salary-cap can. They’ve kicked it so frequently that, through 2025 (the fourth year of the deal), the Browns will have absorbed only 41.1 of the total cap dollars in the contract.
The numbers don’t lie. The five-year, fully-guaranteed contract pays out $230 million. Through 2025, Watson will have been paid $184 million. But roughly half of that amount — $94.6 million — will have hit the cap.
That leaves $135.4 million to be charged in 2026 and beyond. And while last year’s tweaking of the deal makes it easier to push the dead money out as far as 2029, they won’t be fully free of the albatross contract for years to come.
The exercise of the 2025 restructuring sends two other messages. First, our cockeyed idea for dumping the final $92 million by including the Watson deal in a Myles Garrett trade won’t happen. By converting the maximum amount of his $46 million 2025 salary into a bonus, the deal has only $47.255 million in cash remaining. At this point, they’ll continue the relationship in order to minimize the cap havoc that a sudden move would make.
Second, to the extent the Browns were considering whether to parlay the off-premises re-tear of his Achilles tendon into an escape hatch for the remaining guarantees, cutting him a check for $44.745 million means that they won’t be pursuing that option.
In the end, he’ll get the full $230 million. And the Browns eventually will take $230 million in cap charges. And the three first-round picks they sent to Houston three years ago (plus multiple other picks) that could have become young, cheap, and possibly ascending players are long gone.
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