Browns salary cap space estimate after Nick Chubb contract; Watson restructure still an option

GM Andrew Berry has space to work with after redoing Chubb’s contract

For many fans and media, the NFL’s salary cap is the boogie man in the corner waiting to get teams. For Cleveland Browns GM Andrew Berry, the NFL salary cap is an accounting tool that is very flexible.

With big deals, for their positions at the time they were given, doled out to QB Deshaun Watson, DE Myles Garrett, WR Amari Cooper, CB Denzel Ward, OL Wyatt Teller and Joel Bitionio, TE David Njoku and RB Nick Chubb, many were worried about the Browns cap space becoming a problem.

Berry, along with the deep pockets of owner Jimmy Haslam, have navigated the waters of the salary cap without having to cut any key contributors and rarely losing players to free agency that they would have liked to keep.

Thursday, two weeks before the NFL draft, Berry was able to sign Chubb to a new contract that lowered the running back’s cap hit by around $9 million. Based on numbers available at Over the Cap, that means Cleveland currently has over $13 million in cap space this year.

Some of that space will be needed to sign the Browns draft class but, with only five selections, that will cost the team a little over a million this season against the cap.

Whether it is to acquire a big salaried player in a trade or to use as a part of a rollover plan, Berry can still save over $33 million this year by restructuring Watson’s deal and over $12 million doing the same with Cooper’s.

Cleveland is currently estimated to be $17.8 million over next year’s cap but would be able to roll over any cap left over this year, whether they restructure those deals or not this season. Browns were estimated anywhere from $12 to 20 million over the cap coming into this offseason.

We will keep you up to date as details on Chubb’s contract come in and if they impact the team’s cap space significantly.

Are you surprised at how easily Berry has been able to navigate the salary cap or do you still assume “it will come due” and cause the team to tear down some of their key players?