In today's NFL, the salary cap is a game played by Ivy-League-level executives with countless hidden levers at their fingertips. The caveat is that the owner needs to be willing to spend beyond the league’s annual cap number, at least in multi-year windows, to reap the full benefits.
Through that lens, the Cleveland Browns have a luxury on their hands.
Owner Jimmy Haslam has shown a willingness to spend over the past five-plus years, and general manager Andrew Berry is among the league’s best when it comes to manipulating the league’s soft salary cap system.
The latest example was the two-year extension Cleveland gave to star cornerback Denzel Ward. The new money in the deal made Ward the NFL’s highest-paid at the position in terms of average annual value. But his cap hits are extremely manageable in the short term, below $20 million in both 2026 and 2027, and his salary only increased $3 million over that same timeframe with some baked-in guarantees.
The trick is a longtime Howie Roseman contract staple — utilizing void years and option bonus payments to your team's advantage.
As former NFL analytics director Ryan Paganetti said recently, teams like the Eagles and Browns who consistently leverage these cap mechanisms already have a massive edge over the competition in terms of roster building and flexibility.
“Every GM should be bugging their ownership to max the void years,” Paganetti wrote. “If you are an owner and don’t want to do it, you should be pushing for the practice to be banned as it puts your team at a huge disadvantage in the present.”
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Berry learned from the best in the business under Roseman, the Philadelphia Eagles GM, back in 2019. Roseman and Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie have been the league’s gold standard in terms of cash-over-cap spending and management.
The first step is to build through the draft and leverage the NFL’s rookie-scale system, which prohibits extensions until a player reaches three years of service time.
The Eagles, for example, landed a stud cornerback of their own in 2024 first-round draft pick Quinshon Mitchell. Ward’s new average annual value of $31.1 million might be of particular interest to Mitchell’s camp, as he’s set to become extension eligible in 2027.
Paganetti was commenting specifically on Philadelphia’s recent mega extension for defensive tackle Jalen Carter, the Eagles’ No. 9 overall draft pick in 2023. The deal was four years at $152 million in total max value, with five option bonus payments and four void years (or dummy years added purely for salary cap prorations). Carter’s cap hits over the first three years, starting in 2026, will be $9.1 million, $9.5 million, and $15.5 million as a result, per Spotrac.
Berry has been using a similar strategy with just about every Browns contract. Ward’s new deal, for example, includes two void years to help maintain cap flexibility in 2026 and 2027. Cleveland could potentially restructure Ward’s deal and add up to two more dummy years in the future to address his scheduled $41.3 million cap number in 2028.
The strategy involves routine salary conversions for cap purposes, which often result in real-cash bonus payments from the owner up front, and sizable dead money for the GM to manage down the road. Cleveland currently sits second in the NFL in 2026 dead money (salary cap dollars for players no longer on the roster) at a whopping $116.8 million. The Eagles are fifth on that list at $74.5 million.
The Browns also sit 11th (and climbing) in the league in total cap space after executing extensions for Ward and safety Grant Delpit. The Eagles are 15th after signing Carter to his massive extension.
The Browns have been mimicking the Eagles’ model for years, but they’ve finally hit on enough draft picks in recent seasons to fully create and maximize a championship window. With Deshaun Watson’s salary coming off the books next spring, Cleveland should have all the financial flexibility it needs to stack more talent on the roster and make a run.
Berry and Haslam have received their fair share of criticism over the years, with their decision to go all-in on Watson in 2022 the No. 1 complaint. But it’s easy to like where the team is at, and where it might be heading, entering 2026.
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