Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson said Thursday he’ll be ready for Week 1. The bigger question is how many weeks he’ll be ready for after that.
His first year in Cleveland was shortened to six games. Thanks to multiple injuries, his second season consisted of another six games. That’s $92 million for 12 games.
This year, he gets another $46 million in fully guaranteed salary. Ditto for 2025 and 2026. The Browns opted not to restructure the deal in 2024, keeping him on the books at a cap number of $63.77 million. (His cap number is slightly more than that in each of the next two years.)
If Watson’s contract wasn’t fully guaranteed through 2026, this would likely be his up-or-out year, because the final two years wouldn’t have been guaranteed. What if this season ends up being shortened again for Watson due to injury? What if he just doesn’t play at a sufficiently high level?
The Browns will have $92 million in cash due to Watson over the final two years of the contract, along with $136.938 million in cap charges. Since they’ll be paying him whether he’s on the team or not, there would be no reason to cut him. At some point, however, the Browns need to ask themselves whether he’s the best option at the option.
They’ve loaded up with three backups for now, none of whom are camp arms. They thrived with Joe Flacco in a late-season role in 2023. They might have been concerned that his presence and his popularity would have created a groundswell for him to leapfrog Watson, if Deshaun struggles at all to start the season.
Watson has yet to perform like he did with the Texans. The Browns are otherwise solid enough to thrive without him doing what they hoped he’d do when they made the massive investment of guaranteed cash and first-round picks to get him.
The question becomes how much longer will they stick with him as the starter, if he doesn’t turn the clock back to 2020 or earlier? Will they keep him in the QB1 role simply because of the investment they made? Or will they do something like what the Broncos did with Russell Wilson, biting the bullet in order to move forward?
The Broncos are taking $85 million in dead-money charges over the next two years after cutting Wilson, and they’re paying him $39 million in 2024 (less the $1.21 million he’ll make in Pittsburgh). Would the Browns consider making Watson a post-June 1 release next March? They’d still owe him $92 million in cash, less whatever he makes elsewhere. They’d take a cap charge of $63.977 million in 2025 and $72.961 million in 2026.
(The other possibilities would be to try to trade him to a new team and to pay part of the salaries, or to hope that he does something that allows his guarantees to be voided.)
That’s the problem with a five-year guaranteed deal. It forces a team to double down on a possible mistake, tolerating massive financial obligations that could be redistributed to other players who are carrying the load. It’s also why an NFL with fully-guaranteed veteran deals would entail a very high percentage of one-, two-, and at most three-year deals.
The good news for the Browns is they’re good. Very good, actually. The bad news is that they’d be even better if they hadn’t gotten drunk on the notion that Deshaun would take them to the promised land. There’s a chance that his presence — and the draft picks they lost to get him — will be the thing that keeps an otherwise Super Bowl-ready team from getting there.
There’s also a chance he’ll be the difference between a wild-card exit and a deep playoff run. It also comes down to what he does, and how healthy he stays, in 2024.
