5 best Cleveland Browns cap moves of the 2022 offseason

2. Trading Case Keenum

Just as the Browns benefitting by signing Brissett as a very talented but inexpensive backup, they also benefitted from the transaction when they bid farewell to the valued employee who previously occupied the position.

Case Keenum is a good player and you hate to see changes at the backup quarterback position, almost as much as at the first string position. It also pains me to write about trading away a good player who wanted to be a Brown and calling it a great salary cap move.

However, Keenum has landed on his feet, backing up Josh Allen in Buffalo, so the Browns receive a seventh-round pick and approximately $6.2 million savings on the salary cap. However, Cleveland is charged $2.3 million worth of cap charges in the form of earned bonuses which do not transfer to his new team.

Over The Cap lists the draft value of the last round draft picks as about 40 percent of the fifth round (which earlier we argued was worth around $4.5 million dollars, give or take, implying the value of the seventh round draft pick is around $2 million.

Actually, this writer’s personal opinion is that the seventh round is worth less than that because there is an advantage to having an additional roster space used to audition undrafted free agents, but for now, let’s defer to the wisdom of Jason Fitzgerald and say that they are a worthwhile investment. If so, the Browns received a total value of $8 million for Keenum.

Part of the reason why the Browns recovered so much money is that they back-loaded the contract so that they gave themselves a discount for year one and increased his salary in year two and year three. By doing so they basically incentivized themselves to cut or trade Keenum. A level-funded contract would have made it more likely that he could have been kept on for the long term.