Setbacks and Paybacks

Not much was gleaned from general manager Andrew Berry’s end-of-year presser. Myles Garrett is expected back, despite his comments about not wanting to be part of a rebuild, signaling to fans that the pedal is still indeed pressed to the metal. Whether to bring back Nick Chubb is going to be a tough decision from the organization, and likely will come down to how much he asks for coming off a year that he looked like a very light shade of himself. Berry reiterated, or maybe just iterated as we had never heard this before, that Ken Dorsey was head coach Kevin Stefanski’s hire, not something that was thrust upon him from above. But probably the biggest news is that quarterback Deshaun Watson had a setback in his rehab from an Achilles tendon injury.

Anything regarding Watson has been shrouded in mystery since the beginning, and the injury has been no different. It’s not uncommon that players “go dark” when away from the team rehabbing, so the “no news is good news” is often accepted as a rule. There have also been questions about how much Watson will play for the team going forward after seeing how badly he played in 2024 and how much his presence seemed to have affected the roster, and any extension of time off from injury further pushes that narrative. But with the extended injury window, it brought up conversations about insurance payments and how much Cleveland could be “saved” by having Watson down with a long term injury.

Heading into the 2024 season, the front office and Watson restructured his deal. They not only removed some protections from him for suspensions and the like, but they also insured some of his contract for 2024 and 2025. What’s been reported in numerous places is that the Browns insured up to $13.9 million in 2024 and $44.2 million in 2025. The insurance pays out to the team if the player suffers an injury and misses games due to that injury. It’s common among guaranteed deals and showed up in the national eye in 2023 when Aaron Rodgers suffered the same injury to his Achilles in Week 1 and missed the season.

The way the insurance payback works is that if the injury is proven to cost the player games, the payback is credited to the next year’s salary cap as “relief”, not as cash for the team. So in the case of Watson, the organization will get a chunk of money towards their cap in 2025 from Watson’s injury in 2024. If Watson is due to miss time in 2025, some of that $44.2 million will get paid back to the team for their 2026 salary cap number. Suppose you are uninitiated with the bemoaning of Watson’s deal. In that case, that is the year that the organization can see the light at the end of the tunnel concerning the mega-bad contract given to their mercurial quarterback.

So let me give you a glimpse of what can likely be the timeline for Deshaun Watson, the quarterback position, and the Cleveland Browns in 2025:

  • In free agency, Cleveland brings in a veteran quarterback to start the beginning of the year, if not all of it. It’s expected by many that QB will be Stefanski’s old friend Kirk Cousins, who is set to be released by the Atlanta Falcons after a dismal year coming off his Achilles injury. With offset language in his deal with the Falcons, Cousins will get his money from them and be eligible to sign with an NFL team for as low as $1 million. Think Russell Wilson with Pittsburgh. If it’s not Cousins, it could be any number of veteran players, but someone likely familiar with the Stefanski offense.

  • In the draft, Cleveland will select a quarterback. It might be with their second overall pick, the likes of Cam Ward from Miami, Shedur Sanders from Colorado, or later with someone like Quinn Ewers or Jaxson Dart or Kurtis Rourke, but they will select a quarterback. It’s an inevitability that is as expected as the sun rising in the east.

  • At some point in the summer, Watson will be placed on the PUP list, or Physically Unable to Perfom list. That will allow the team to keep him off the roster for roster spacial reasons and also away from the team for roster morale reasons. Given the setback, Watson will likely remain on the PUP list into the season, much like Chubb was in 2024. Starting the year on the PUP means you miss at least Weeks 1 through 4, and at such time the team would have to designate you to return or place you on injured reserve. Even if the team designates a player to return, they are not required to activate them. This would allow the team to collect insurance from his injury settlement while allowing him to be on the roster nominally and register a year on his deal, pushing forward letting him walk in the summer of 2026 as a post June 1 cut and spreading the dead cap hit over two years.

If all this seems to good to be true, it likely is. We have no idea how much of a setback Watson suffered or even really when he suffered it. It’s known by fans and anyone adjacent to the organization that the feelings about Watson are bad bad bad, but teams are usually loathe to pay players to sit at home when healthy. They can cut him, of course, but we know that isn’t coming until 2026. Trading him is the same, and would likely cost just as much to send him out as it did to acquire him in the first place. But in what seems to be a weird twist and turn of events, a setback in his rehab might be the best thing for the player and franchise.

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