Deshaun Watson contract restructure: Implications for Browns - ESPN

Deshaun Watson's contract with the Cleveland Browns is very straightforward but also unique. Signed in the spring of 2022 as part of the trade that sent Watson from Houston to Cleveland, the deal pays Watson $230 million over five years — exactly $46 million each year, fully guaranteed. No fancy roster bonuses or option bonuses. He received a $44.965 million signing bonus and a $1.035 million salary in 2022, and he was scheduled to get $46 million in salary in each of the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons.

As NFL contract structures go, it's about as basic as they come. So it's worth explaining why the team would change it — as the Browns did Thursday by restructuring it for the second year in a row and increasing next year's cap number to $72.935 million.

Last year, the Browns restructured Watson's contract for salary cap relief, converting all but $1.08 million into a signing bonus and adding a void year in 2027. Teams do this all the time because a signing bonus, even if paid up front in its entirety, can be spread out over as many as five years for salary cap accounting purposes. So of the $44.92 million in 2023 salary that the Browns converted to a signing bonus, they only have to count one-fifth ($8.984 million) against their cap each year. That lowered Watson's cap number to $19.057 million in 2023 and increased his 2024, 2025 and 2026 numbers to $63,774,678 (and added that «void year» where the cap number is the remaining $8.984 million; otherwise they would have had to count one-fourth of the new signing bonus each year instead of one-fifth).

That $63,774,678 would have been the highest cap number in the league this season, so on some level, it was no major surprise to learn Thursday morning that the Browns had