Browns RB room: Salary cap hits in 2025 - Youth saves money

Browns RB room: Salary cap hits in 2025 - Youth saves money
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Cleveland has a lot of young talent on cap-friendly deals at RB.

Next up on our Cleveland Browns salary cap round-up for 2025 is the running back position. You can also see our Part 1 and Part 2 of our RB preview.

With the running back position, it’s now a position of high investment. Let’s take a look at the 2025 salary cap hits:

There should be an asterisk next to rookie Quinshon Judkins, since his contract is not official (he is one of the few NFL rookies not to have signed yet, for whatever reason). Nonetheless, rookie contracts are pretty standard in terms of financials, so we’re using Over the Cap’s rookie wage scale.

Remember that come the regular season, only the Top 53 will count toward the cap, which means that the likes of Troy Hairston and Ahmani Marshall don’t end up counting. The rest of the backs should be above the threshold and where money could hypothetically be saved. Strong does not have guaranteed money, but you have to also think of addition by subtraction. Strong’s $1.1 million cap hit is near the bottom of the Top 53, so if he drops out, a player making $1.03 million gets bumped on to the roster, which only saves $70,000 in cap space.

Cutting Ford would not save any money, as his contract is fully guaranteed. That is why he is more likely to be a trade candidate if it comes down to that. Otherwise, we anticipate the Browns’ cap space at running back to remain the same all the way through the regular season.