Garrett’s current contract has been on the books for several years with the Browns. It was also restructured in 2023.

Teams restructure contracts to create cap space in the current league year. This works by treating base salary (which would be due weekly across an entire season) as bonus money, because while bonus money is paid immediately, it’s prorated over five years.

So it counts against the cap only one-fifth of what the player is actually paid. This is why dead money exists: The following four years each carry 20 percent of that restructure bonus as well, which represents money that was already paid to the player being accounted for on paper after the fact.

The average annual value of Garrett’s contract from when he signed it is $25 million (per year). This is less than his actual current monetary value because this deal was inked way back in 2020; four players have signed for more since then, with Nick Bosa’s market-setting number of $34 million AAV at the top.

Garrett’s financial cost to a team trading for him would be only about $45.5 million for two and a half years, which is around $18.2 million per season.

So given his low AAV due to be paid by an acquiring team and the facts that he isn’t asking for a new contract or clamoring to be dealt elsewhere, if fully healthy (which I outlined here), objective analysis dictates that his trade value is more than any defensive player ever to be traded.

We’ll assign specific picks to his worth and define the haul the Browns would expect to amass where we briefly visit a recent trade proposal involving him and put a bow on it all in the conclusion: Part 5.

—@PoisonPill4