There is a subtle but important shift about to occur within the Cleveland Browns. At 2-7 entering the bye week, it’s clear this is a lost season and the financial wreckage from the Deshaun Watson contract will be felt on the cap sheet at least for the next couple of years.
It doesn’t make winning impossible if they somehow fall into the right quarterback over the next six or seven months, but it absolutely narrows the path and tightens the margins with which they have to operate for the foreseeable future.
(I realize the cynicism that accompanies the idea of the Browns getting the quarterback position right on their next try after failing miserably for 25 years, but stay with me here.)
No one is going to admit this, but ownership’s sole focus at this point has to become the 2027 and 2028 seasons. That’s the deadline. If it happens sooner, all the better. But it certainly can’t be any later.
To be clear, I’m not advocating the Browns should or will embark on a 3- to 4-year rebuild. But there are holes to fill and the Watson gamble crippled a franchise that now has to sift through the rubble while Jimmy and Dee Haslam try to secure the rest of the funding to open a beautiful $2.5 billion domed stadium in 2029.
The Haslams have committed to putting up half the money, but there still has been no plan or announcement where the other half is coming from. They knew they couldn’t get a ballot issue to pass, so they never bothered taking it before the voters.
The state will kick in part of it, but what about the rest? The Browns have received resistance from city and county officials since dome details and the Brook Park concept first leaked. Now the attorney general is threatening to intervene.
Let’s cut through the politics of it and assume for a moment Jimmy’s World gets built somewhere in the next five years, either in Brook Park or downtown. This franchise still needs to generate enough hope and momentum (i.e., victories) between now and then—and especially by 2028—to entice enough fans and businesses to pay the exorbitant costs necessary to step inside the palace.
The Buffalo Bills are charging season ticket holders anywhere from $8,000 to $50,000 for Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) to their new open-air stadium that opens in 2026. That doesn’t include the actual price of the ticket.
Since the Bills’ new stadium won’t have a roof, the cost should come in under $2 billion. Fans so far have been willing to write the checks with all of those zeroes attached because the Bills have Josh Allen and a highly competitive team every year in the AFC.
Imagine sales if the Bills were 2-7 and last in the division with no franchise quarterback.
The Haslams’ Q score in Cleveland has never been particularly high, but it’s even lower than usual in the wake of the Watson debacle and another season of unmet expectations. Plenty of fans have been angry at the organization since the trade occurred. Even more turned on them when Watson’s play deteriorated and never matched the contract or the trade capital surrendered to acquire him. The Browns are now 71-125-1 in the 12 years the Haslams have been in charge. Anger and distrust from fans toward this ownership group have probably never been higher than right now.
It doesn’t leave much time to repair quite a bit of PR damage before ground is broken on a new stadium and the ticket office tries to convince fans in a city with one of the country’s highest poverty rates to spend tens of thousands on seats.
LIVE: GM Andrew Berry speaks to the media during the bye week https://t.co/D1oUKzAIXs
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) November 6, 2024
To the surprise of no one, Browns general manager Andrew Berry offered no solutions to the current problems when he met with reporters Wednesday. He avoided most of the uncomfortable questions with some form of “now is not the time to address that. We’ll talk about it after the season.”
He was given multiple opportunities to commit to Watson for next season and refused to do so. Again, no great surprise. But it leaves the Browns with a rather large mess to clean up.
In addition to the quarterback, the entire offensive line might soon need to be rebuilt. Jed Wills looks like he won’t return, but counting on Dawand Jones to keep his weight under control and put in the work necessary to be a franchise left tackle remains an enormous risk.
Joel Bitonio is 33 and under contract for one more year. Wyatt Teller has another year left. Zak Zinter was drafted to be a replacement for one of them, and maybe he still can, but he was such a disaster as a rookie he’s now buried on the depth chart. I don’t see how the Browns can realistically count on him to be a starting option next year.
Nick Chubb is in the last year of his deal and hasn’t looked yet like the Chubb of old. The team just traded its top receiver a few weeks ago in Amari Cooper.
The defense is in better shape, but the offense needs a lot of work.
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Fixing the quarterback position, whether through the draft or getting lucky on a retread, will make everything else look much better.
With Bitonio’s career winding down and Chubb looking like he’s much closer to the end than anyone wants to admit, Myles Garrett looms as the most important figure. Garrett is still in his prime and has two years left on his contract. To this point, he hasn’t intimated he’d ever ask out.
Does he have the stomach to go through this again? Could the Browns really squander another entire Hall of Fame career as they did with Joe Thomas?
Garrett would be 33 when the new stadium opens. Reggie White recorded 55 sacks from his age 33 season until the end of his career. Bruce Smith registered more than 70 sacks and played until he was 40, so certainly elite edge rushers can still be productive well into their 30s.
Would the Browns be better off trading Garrett after the season, loading up on picks and aiming for the ’27 and ’28 seasons? Or keep him as a foundational (yet aging) piece when the new building opens?
All of this may seem too far into the future for fans to care about, but I guarantee you they’re thinking about all of this inside Browns headquarters. This is the same organization that tanked for two full years, and it netted them two playoff appearances and one postseason victory.
Now they are facing another reckoning. What happens over the next several months certainly matters, and how they navigate the Watson contract will be significant. But with Watson now a bust, the most important target date is 3 to 4 years from now. This ownership group could have billions riding on it.
