How The Cleveland Browns Can Create $50m Of Cap Space To Rollover For 2025
Looking at how a restructure works, how much cap space the Cleveland Browns can create and what the knock on impact of this is
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 the players the Cleveland Browns can do during what remains of the 2024 offseason. At the same time we can look at other cap space they can generate to enable more rollover.
It is my opinion that teams should restructure deals for all their players they plan to keep for that season but that doesn’t mean you spend all that cap space in the current year, lots of it needs to be rolled over into the future so that keep a sustainable spending model. Here is a previous article I wrote on how the Cleveland Browns make their spending sustainable.
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.
There are reports around the league that teams are working into contracts 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.
Let us look at Deshaun Watson’s deal as it is a good example of how restructuring works, he is paid $46m a year every year of the deal but anything above the minimum they have converted to a signing bonus in year one of the deal. This allows them to spread that cost over up to 5 years depending on the length of the contract, if there are less than 5 years on the deal a team can create void (fake) years on the deal to allow all 5 years of spreading out. Once a deal has been restructured this money cannot be traded away or moved back again. So rather than a flat $46m every year they gained $35,972,000 of 2022 cap space. At the same time, their salary cap costs for 2023-2026 went up by $8,993,000 each.
The Cleveland Browns have been really smart in effectively sorting restructures for several of their players already. We have seen this with new deals where they have been creating option bonuses in future years which is basically a signing bonus in future years. Here is a look at any players they have already done
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