Deshaun Watson has a new contract. Well, he has a different contract. Though the specifics still aren’t public, we can garner a few details from what’s been reliably written if we cross check that information with what we already know about how the salary cap functions.

It’s been reported that no new money has been added, and the “deal doesn’t reduce Watson’s pay” either. These statements are believable because there’s no reason (other than feeling charitable) for Watson to give back guaranteed money, and there are certainly no defensible grounds for the Browns to give him a raise. That’d be like feeding the racoons to try to teach them not to eat your garbage.

It’s been written that the “move adds a voidable year for 2028” — which is wrong because the 2028 void year was added in August.

Elsewhere it was printed that amending the deal would serve in “allowing the Browns to push out his dead salary cap into 2030.” This is also wrong because the maximum number of years for prorating bonus money (which becomes dead cap in future seasons) would take Watson’s financial impact through 2028 — even if an additional void year had been put in place for 2029.

The only way he could carry a cap hit into 2030 would be if he were scheduled to receive a Paragraph 5 salary for 2027 and 2028 and he’s actually on the team (or a team list, e.g. PUP or exempt) those seasons. Currently his contract is set to terminate after the 2026 league year when the remaining years will automatically void. And if they didn’t add money (which would effectively occur if they unvoided years and wrote in guarantees there), they’d have to subtract $2.735 million from his P5 for 2025-26 to account for veteran minimums in 2027-28.

That would be a very odd thing for Watson to agree to, and those years would no longer be automatically voidable in a scenario where the Browns could truly make his cap hits last into 2030. It would also in that case be considered an extension, rather than a restructure or renegotiation. And that side of it would be a very odd thing for Cleveland’s front office to do.

So what is in fact different about Watson’s contract now, and what can we expect based on that?

We’ll answer both of those questions presently as we move to Part 3.

—@PoisonPill4