The Cleveland Browns have long been a suffering NFL franchise. Every time it seems like the team might turn a corner, things fall apart. During the 2020 season, Baker Mayfield led the Browns to a playoff win over their rival, the Pittsburgh Steelers. He got sent out of town a year later. In 2023, Cleveland signed Joe Flacco as an emergency quarterback. His career revival was a great regular season story until the Browns got obliterated in the playoffs.
Often, these mishaps are the fault of the Browns themselves. Perhaps there's no greater example of that than the debacle the team has had with Deshaun Watson. In 2022, after the team made it clear it was parting ways with Mayfield, it traded for Watson, then the quarterback of the Houston Texans.
The trade itself was already pretty rough. Cleveland gave up six draft picks, including its first-round picks in 2022, 2023, and 2024, in exchange for Watson and a lone sixth-rounder. The Browns then turned around and gave Watson a five-year deal worth $230 million—all of it guaranteed.
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The Browns just restructured Watson's deal. He'll still make $46 million guaranteed this year, even if he doesn't play a single snap, but it'll be as a signing bonus instead of his salary. That way, Cleveland will save $36 million in a salary cap hit. It's a small silver lining for the team's fans because this has been one of the worst scenarios imaginable.
A year before the Browns made the deal, Watson was hit with nearly two dozen lawsuits—the total number eventually reached 24 by June 2022—from massage therapists alleging several acts of sexual assault.
The Browns knew all of this was going on and still gifted Watson nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. He missed the first 11 games of the 2022 season, a league suspension as the result of the allegations and lawsuits.
Things haven't gotten better since then. Watson is routinely hurt; when he has played, he's looked like a shell of his former self. He's appeared in 19 of the 51 regular season games the Browns have played since signing him. Not once has he topped 300 yards passing, he's had nearly as many turnovers (17) as touchdown passes (19), and the Browns have a 9-10 record with him under center.
No matter how you look at it, the trade has been a disaster for the Browns. And this is the second time the Browns have restructured the deal in the past three months, doing anything they can to salvage it. The earlier move added a voidable year in 2028 onto Watson's deal, which ends in 2026. It's another salary cap move that won't reduce the amount of money the Browns actually have to pay Watson.
Watson is rehabbing an Achilles injury and will likely be in contention for the starting gig once again this year. But really, there's no obligation for him to play at all. He's going to get paid the full $230 million of his contract—no amount of restructuring will change that.
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