With all the recent buzz about quarterbacks for the Cleveland Browns, it\u2019s easy to forget that Deshaun Watson is still on the team. Despite the team adding four healthy quarterbacks, including Kenny Pickett, Joe Flacco, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders, after the NFL Draft, Watson\u2019s presence continues to overshadow things.<\/p>\n
While Watson might not be as much of a concern in 2025, given the fact he could be sidelined due to a torn Achilles, his contract still runs through 2026, which could lead to some awkward situations for the Browns when it comes time to make decisions about the future of the quarterback position.<\/p>\n
As ESPN\u2019s Daniel Oyefusi points out, Watson will be on the roster for the 2025 season, but after that, the Browns will have a big decision to make: whether to part ways with him and deal with the significant financial consequences. If they cut Watson after the 2025 season, they\u2019d face a huge $135 million \u201cdead cap\u201d charge, which is money that still counts against their salary cap even if the player is no longer on the team. This cost could be spread out over the 2026 and 2027 seasons. However, if they decide to cut him after 2026, the dead money would drop to $53 million, which is still a significant amount, but a bit more manageable.<\/p>\n
The Browns are in a tough spot when it comes to the financial structure of Watson\u2019s contract, which has \u201cvoid years\u201d designed to keep paying him even after he becomes a free agent. This means that whether the Browns decide to release him early or not, they\u2019ll be stuck with some major financial headaches.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether team owner Jimmy Haslam would be willing to swallow an additional $80 million in dead money by letting Watson go a year early. But if he decides not to, Watson could continue to loom over the Browns during a potentially strange 2026 season, especially if one of the rookies proves himself and earns the starting job. The Browns aren\u2019t out of the woods yet, so it\u2019ll be interesting to see how they handle the situation moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With all the recent buzz about quarterbacks for the Cleveland Browns, it\u2019s easy to forget that Deshaun Watson is still\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":67866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[26137,24889],"class_list":["post-67865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-deshaun-watson","tag-shedeur-sanders"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}