With their major coaching staff hires now behind them, the Cleveland Browns can officially move on to the next phase of their offseason.
The first item on the agenda for this phase is painfully obvious, too.
Quarterback Deshaun Watson owns the NFL’s largest scheduled 2026 salary cap hit at a whopping $80.7 million. The Browns obviously aren’t going to enter the new league year with one player (who may not even play) accounting for over 25 percent of their total cap number. They’ll need to address the contract, which has been the plan all along.
Similar to the past two seasons, general manager Andrew Berry will soon exercise a routine contract conversion on Watson’s deal. Whether he plays in 2026 or not, Watson’s due $46 million in base salary this year; by converting the majority of that cash into a signing bonus and prorating it over the balance of his deal, Berry can open up close to $36 million in salary cap space, per Spotrac, while barely lifting a finger.
The brutal truth, however, per former NFL agent Joel Corry? The Browns may not be in cap jail this offseason, but they’ll be under a barrel with Watson’s contract throughout this entire new year, and will be paying the price long after the QB is finally released.
Browns are stuck with Deshaun Watson longer than fans had hoped
Corry provided the most comprehensive breakdown of Watson’s contract situation on the Web for CBS Sports, and the harsh reality here is that each step of Cleveland's exit plan was pre-planned for.
The Browns added additional void years to the deal in December of 2024, setting the stage for a series of contract restructures and a post-June 1 release in 2027. That final maneuver will split Watson’s $86.2 million in dead-cap charges into hits of $34.6 million in 2027, and $51.5 million in 2028.
Only then will Cleveland be fully finished from this saga, some seven years after the team traded a treasure trove of draft picks and signed Watson to an unprecedented fully guaranteed, $230 million contract.
According to Corry, the Browns have no choice but to bite the bullet and work towards those future cap penalties for Watson. They can’t make him a post-June 1 release this year, or his $80.7 million cap number will hit the books (along with another $50.4 million in 2027). They can’t cut him outright due to an accelerated $131 million cap charge.
They also can’t trade him, Corry wrote, because even if a move was made after June 1, that $80.7 million cap charge would remain on Cleveland’s books for 2027. Watson also has a no-trade clause in his deal, and is coming off a twice-ruptured Achilles tendon. He hasn’t played a snap since Week 7 of the 2024 regular season.
“The coaching change from Kevin Stefanki to Todd Monken is potentially beneficial to Watson,” Corry wrote. “Monken is intrigued by Watson because of the quarterback's previous success when playing against him. Watson regaining some semblance of his previous form after his injuries, which also include a fracture to the glenoid bone in his throwing (right) shoulder that limited him to six games in 2023, would be a remarkable and improbable turnaround.”
Todd Moken and the Browns can talk up Watson’s chances of resurrecting his career in a de facto prove-it year in Cleveland, but the proof’s been in the numbers all along. No matter what they say or do going forward, the Browns have been planning their exit plan from Watson for years, and it’s a one-way street to a designated release in March of 2027.
Until then, the saga continues.