5 worst Cleveland Browns cap moves of the 2022 offseason

4. Jakeem Grant’s balloon contract

Jakeem Grant is a quality ballplayer and the best special teams player since Josh Cribbs. We are going to love him.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that once again the Browns structured a contract that is going to start out great and end poorly. In this case, a soon-to-be-30-year-old player was signed at a discount for the first year, with escalating salary in years two and three. Cleveland is going to be leading the NFL in “dead money” at a time when they are struggling to fit Watson’s deal under the salary cap.

According to Over The Cap, Grant’s cap number is a discounted $1.9 million this season and goes up to $3.9 million in 2023 at age 31. In 2024 at age 32, he is supposed to get $4.2 million. This escalating pay rate makes no sense. He’s not going to get more valuable as he ages, and the Browns are not going to have more cap space in the future.

Therefore, to fit him under the cap, they can extend him and obtain another first-year discount, to walk down a new contract back to the two million dollar level. This assumes he will continue to be a quality player into his mid-30s.

Not every kick returner can play at the same level as Grant. However, the Browns have several candidates who were being developed including Demetric Felton, who was good at returning kicks but not so good at controlling the ball, and Anthony Schwartz, who was just barely 21 last season.

At Auburn, he was a two-sport star who split his time between track and football and just didn’t have enough football experience. It was a mistake to turn him loose too quickly. But it’s not clear that the Browns had to give up on both players after their rookie season. Thir typical pattern is to expect instant maturity from rookies and then give up when it’s not there.

Maybe some of this is coaching, and Grant may not solve it. Remember when the Browns had 12 men on the field versus Baltimore, called time out, and still had 12 men on the field? Maybe they need to be doing a better job in special teams overall, and if they had the patience to coach the returners, they might have developed Schwartz and Felton, rather than blowing big money on a star return man who becomes unaffordable down the road.

Again, it is not this fan’s intention to pick on Grant, who is a Pro Bowl player. The complaint is with the front office that’s accumulating large due bills for future years. Eventually, the future is going to happen. If the Browns want to sign free agents, they should do less of the back-end loading and pay more of their bills upfront. They need to accumulate future salary cap space rather than send all their bills into future cap years.

In 2022, Cleveland is paying $30 million dollars in dead money (expired contracts that still have guaranteed money). This includes Baker Mayfield, Austin Hooper, Hill, Case Keenum, Malik Jackson, J.C. Tretter, Jarvis Landry, and others. This has got to stop. It’s a bad problem that will get worse based on Berry’s increasing tendency for buy-now, pay-later deals.

But if you think Hill’s situation was bad, wait till you read about David Njoku’s deal.