With another set of allegations coming down against Deshaun Watson of the Browns I have received a number of questions about what this means for his contract with the team that I will try to answer here as best I can.
At the moment, Watson’s salaries are fully guaranteed in 2025 and 2026. Both of those salaries are worth $46 million. Watson’s 2024 salary was almost all converted to a signing bonus ($44.79M of the $46M salary) before the season began and prorated over the course of the contract. This salary could be subject to forfeiture depending on when a suspension came down from the league.
NFL contracts have pretty standard default language on guaranteed salary. Get suspended by the NFL for a drug violation and the guarantee is void. Get suspended by the NFL for off field conduct and the guarantee is void. Be unavailable because you are holding out, went to jail, got hurt playing pickup basketball or just did not feel like showing up and the guarantee is void. Get suspended by a team for conduct detrimental to the club or do something that reflects poorly on the organization and the guarantee is void. Basically, any hiccup that you can think of will likely void a guaranteed contract in the NFL.
Watson’s contract was unique because when he was traded for by the Browns it was well known that he was in the middle of multiple lawsuits which were likely going to lead to a NFL suspension. The Browns agreed to waive the standard guarantee void language for any condition that would be triggered by anything related to these cases and any other cases that Watson thought could be coming provided that Watson provided the Browns with the details. The language, per source with a knowledge of specific details of the contracts, seemed to pertain only to league suspensions that came down in 2022 or 2023 which would make a 2024 suspension unique even if suspended due to a potential case the Browns were already made aware of. The contract, however, should not allow the Browns to act on their own to void the guarantees if they were aware that this specific accusation was a possibility and it would require a league suspension to allow them to void the contract.
The salary cap costs to release Watson are still very high even if the Browns were able to void the guarantees. If they were able to void his guarantees this season and cut him now the cap cost would be $26.7M this year and about $80.25M in 2025. A suspension in 2024 would allow them to get credits for the bonus paid in 2024. If he was suspended in 2025, allowing the team to void the guarantee, they would have the option of taking the $80.25M cap charge in 2025 or spreading it out as $26.7M in 2025 and $53.6M in 2026. If they chose the latter the salary cap hold during free agency in 2025 would be $72.9M and then it would drop to $26.7M on June 2, 2025. In many ways the salary cap considerations are very similar to those of the Broncos with Russell Wilson this past offseason.
Taking action before the NFL issued a suspension might prove difficult. Guaranteed salary accelerates on the cap regardless of whether or not a player is released before or after June 1. That would lead to an additional $92 million in cap charges hitting the cap in 2024. If the league felt that the void was justified they would process it but in theory a grievance filed against the Browns should result in a $37.8M hold charge on the cap though there have been some rare instances where players have been reported to have filed a grievance and no cap charge was placed by the league on the team.
The Browns do have the room to absorb such a hit but it would put them in a more difficult position. If they lost the grievance they would have a massive negative adjustment to their 2025 salary cap making it very difficult to function next year. So they are most likely at the mercy of the NFL unless they have a clear out based on the circumstances of this specific accusation.
Finding a way out of the Watson contract, despite the monster short term cap consequences, would be beneficial overall for the team. The trade for Watson and subsequent contract modification will likely go down as the worst sign and trade in NFL history and this would allow them to turn the page on this era. Their path forward would remain the same, in my opinion, as if Watson was on the team- find a way to trade up in the NFL draft and get a young QB to offset the Watson salary cap issues and bring actual upside to the position. However, if they can actually move him off the team it will give the Browns, in the long term, an extra $92 million to work with and remove his presence from the sidelines while they try to develop another player.
At this stage of the game the Browns should be hoping that they can find a way out from under the contract. Watson only appeared in 12 games in his first two years with the team and has not resembled the player he was in Houston. Just on football play alone, Watson is playing at a level where if he was truly a free agent he would be signing a backup with upside type of contract and being asked to compete for a starting job. Combine that with the fact that his situation is toxic and I am not sure he would even be in the NFL right now if not for the contract protections that the Browns gave him in 2022.