Dawgs By Nature
Five quarterbacks, and the one who won’t play continues to spoil everything.
This year, we’re launching a new addition to our training camp positional previews: a look at the salary cap hits that each player is set to account for during the season, if they make the final roster.
We begin with a look at the Browns’ five quarterbacks. You can also see our Part 1 and Part 2 of our QB preview. With the quarterback position, it’s a odd situation because you have four quarterbacks who are expected to compete for a role on the team this year, and they account for $7.5 million of the team’s cap hits at the position. Deshaun Watson accounts for the other $36 million.
Combined, the only individual quarterbacks in the league with higher cap hits than all 5 Browns quarterbacks combined are Dak Prescott, Matthew Stafford, and Joe Burrow. Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray are pretty even with Cleveland. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that your quarterback room takes up as much as the Browns’ does; it just sucks when a non-factor is responsible for the bulk of that.
There really isn’t any more cap savings to be had in 2025 regarding the quarterback room, although Cleveland has to be hoping that Watson is not able to play for the entirety of the season. If that holds true, there is an insurance claim that could be successful on him, which could help free up a lot of salary cap space in the 2026 season. I wish I had more details on how exactly that would work, but this is an unprecedented type of situation for me, so I’ll have to learn the exact details if/when it happens.
The Browns seem unlikely to carry four quarterbacks on the 53-man roster this year, but unless they trade one of the players, they won’t reap the benefits of cap relief. Cutting Flacco or Pickett would still have them on the hook for dead cap space for the majority of their contract.
