Where the Cleveland Browns' Offense Ranks in NFL Spending

The only teams investing less money this year in their offense are the Giants, Ravens, Jets and Dolphins, with three out of those four teams not really expected to be that good this year. 

Curiously, four out of those five teams, including Cleveland, will be sporting new head coaches for the upcoming season. 

The catch

One quick look at how the Browns’ roster is made up will reveal another fascinating detail on the cost of its offense, as even that number may be a little misleading -- most of those cap dollars are allocated to just one player.

Deshaun Watson, one of the two quarterbacks battling it out for the starting gig, has a cap figure of almost $41 million for 2026. That total is currently the seventh highest individual cap hit in the league for an active player, according to Spotrac’s numbers. 

The problem in Cleveland, though, is unlike the six players listed above Watson -- Matthew Stafford ($48.266 million), Justin Herbert ($46.345 million), Chris Jones ($44.85 million), Dak Prescott ($44.59 million), Josh Allen ($44.228 million) and T.J. Watt ($42 million) -- those players have actually played meaningful ball in the last two and a half years, whereas Watson’s last game came in October of 2024, before twice tearing his Achilles’. 

If you take out Watson’s cap hit this year, that would leave the Browns with an offense of around $82 million, with wide receiver Jerry Jeudy leading all cap hits thanks to a $10.3 million hit for this year. No other offensive player has a cap hit of $6 million or over for 2026. 

Cleveland’s offensive cap breakdown signals two very important things. First of all, the team’s core is currently made up of a bunch of young contributors on their first contracts -- see Harold Fannin Jr. and Quinshon Judkins, along with rookies like Spencer Fano, KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston -- and mid level veterans brought in on deals well below market ceilings, like Tytus Howard, Elgton Jenkins and Zion Johnson.

Secondly, if the team is set on cleaning out the house, financially, they’re almost there. It’s hard to fathom any scenario where Watson will still be on this team next year, especially with two first round picks at Cleveland’s disposal, and even though he’ll still be on the team’s books for the next couple of years, due to contract restructures that have added void years to the end of the deal, the Watson-era looks like it has a definitive expiration date. 

A similar argument could be made for Jeudy, who like Watson arrived in Cleveland via a trade, although a much less outlandish one. Jeudy cost the team a fifth and a sixth round pick in 2024 and, after a surprise Pro Bowl nod that year, he delivered his worst pro performance last year when he caught just 50 balls for 602 yards and two scores, while tying for second-most dropped passes in the league. 

Jeudy is currently still under contract for 2027, but cutting him next offseason with a June 1st designation would trigger cap saving of $4.6 million, while dividing his pending 25.4 million cap hit into two years. 

With Concepcion and Boston getting picked among the first 40 selections in last April’s NFL Draft, the Browns are already clearly looking towards the future at wideout.

The main difference between Jeudy and Watson, however, is that a really good season by the former could persuade the team to keep him around for another year, while the latter’s days in Cleveland appear to be numbered. 

Watson might not be doing enough to help his cause, anyway, after a rough first day of training camp where he was picked off on back-to-back plays, and one more interception thrown today. Surprisingly, even though he’s stated he’s now the healthiest he’s been in years, he hasn’t been able to create any separation against last year’s fifth rounder Shedeur Sanders, which is a disappointing turn of events for a 30-year old passer who not long ago set the NFL record for the largest guaranteed contract in the sport’s history.