Deshaun Watson is in his third season with the Cleveland Browns. They reportedly just restructured his contract for the third time.
According to The Athletic, the player and team have agreed to a restructuring that does not affect Watson’s $92 million fully guaranteed money for the 2025 and 2026 seasons or his $72.9 million salary cap each season. However, if Cleveland stays with the team through 2026, it would allow them to spread the dead money over multiple seasons.
The alternative was for Watson to hit a significant cap hit in 2027, when his contract with the team ends.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Watson’s fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract is not only the worst contract in the NFL from a team perspective, but one of the worst in sports history. . Even after three years with the Browns, Watson has missed more games (11) due to suspension for sexual misconduct than he has started in wins (9).
He has yet to play more than seven games in a Browns uniform in a season, appearing in 19 games in total, but a torn Achilles tendon in October forced him to finish the season on the disabled list for the second straight year. It has become. Meanwhile, his legal troubles persist, stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct by more than 20 massage therapists, and the NFL ended its investigation earlier this month.
Here’s the punch line. The last few years of Watson’s contract should have been easier. He still has no cap hit beyond this year’s $27.9 million.
The Browns exercised their right to restructure Watson’s contract after the 2022 and 2023 seasons, giving them more than $35 million in cap space each year, so they have a huge escape window for the next two years. Watson will be faced with a huge cap hit without a player. The Browns are currently $17 million over next season’s salary cap, according to OverTheCap’s calculations, and releasing Watson will only increase that number.
Considering the team is currently 3-12, there is a lot to improve on, but few resources to do so. After three years of doing everything in its power to keep Watson happy, Cleveland now has the burden of completing a rebuild with an albatross on its balance sheet.
The next two seasons could be really ugly for the Browns, and it will be entirely their own fault.
