Deal Completed: Deshaun Watson Signed Another Long-Term Contract With Browns…..

Why restructuring Deshaun Watson’s contract during the 2024 off-season is a no brainer for the team

The first two years of Deshaun Watson’s Cleveland Browns contract were easy to predict. He was always going to have a low cap charge in the first year because they needed the space to pay everyone else and remain competitive in years to come. There has been lots of talk this offseason that the sensible thing to do is not to restructure it as it will benefit the Cleveland Browns and give them more flexibility. I’m here to explain why not restructuring Watson hurts the team significantly more than it could ever help.

What Is A Restructure?

There is a lot of confusion around what a contract restructure is in the NFL and how they work so today I am going to go through the process and look at all the players the Cleveland Browns can do during the 2024 offseason.

The first point and I can’t stress this enough, a restructure IS NOT A PAYCUT!!!

A restructure is taking a player’s base salary or roster bonus and converting it to a signing bonus.

‌– In terms of payment the player is getting the same amount of money
– This doesn’t impact the number of years a player is signed for
– With most restructures the payment isn’t made up front, with the same payment schedule kept
– The team gets a short-term salary cap benefit as their current year number goes down
– This is balanced by future rises in the salary cap, there is no such thing as free money

I would say a good analogy for restructuring is an interest-free credit card, getting one doesn’t make you rich. It allows you to spend more money now but at the same time, you need to pay it back in the future. The same way if you buy a holiday on a credit card and then pay the balance when you return, it is like dead cap. You are paying for the player after you have signed him. People think dead cap is bad but it is just financial management.

There are reports around the league that teams might be working into contracts with the freedom to add void years and restructure contracts as they like without players giving permission each time. This was apparently started by Washington but you can expect the Saints, Eagles, and Browns to follow suit as they are on the cutting edge of contract and salary cap manipulation.

DESHAUN WATSON’S CONTRACT

When looking at Watson’s contract we have five years of equal pay. This is what the team and the agent agreed on. The agent isn’t too worried if it is a signing bonus or base salary because the player is getting the money regardless. When Watson signed the last top 16 quarterback before that to get cut was Peyton Manning, he then got a bigger deal from the Bronco’s in average per year than his Colts deal. So for the team they probably saw very little downside in a guaranteed deal, because if he was average or better you are keeping him.

Here is what happens if you look at it on the salary cap based on the current restructures, I have color-coded each of the $46m payments so you can follow them through the deal.

Once cash has been restructured and converted into a signing bonus you can’t trade or move this money. You also can’t move it around on the salary cap again other than if you cut/trade them in which case it escalates up to an earlier year.

So when looking at how much the team needs to pay the player moving forward we ignore this proration and focus on the unpaid cash amounts in base salary which is $46m a year.

TO RESTRUCTURE, OR NOT TO RESTRUCTURE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Let us begin by looking at how the two contracts impact the salary cap if you restructure on not. I know they had to restructure year one to remain under the salary cap and also he would have paid a fine on the year on salary if they hadn’t added that signing bonus but this is more a section looking at how restructures impact the salary cap.