ESPN is reporting that Luke Wypler has been waived with an injury settlement. While that’s not usually the order of process for this type of situation, if there’s some sort of truth there it could be subtly trumpeting a clever circumvention in navigating the rules by Browns GM Andrew Berry.

Typically, a non-vested veteran who doesn’t pass his physical is first waived with an injury designation if the team isn’t looking to roster him. If he clears waivers — meaning he isn’t claimed by another team — he reverts to his original team’s reserve/injured list, commonly referred to as IR.

If you’re still reading, we better go a little deeper.

The next step, if the player’s injury isn’t expected to keep him out all season, would be for the team and the player to reach an injury settlement. The settlement is a negotiated payment covering a period correlating to the length of time the player is expected to miss due to the injury. This allows the player an opportunity to sign elsewhere once healthy and be eligible to get developmental work in with teams or on practice squads.

It can benefit the player both financially and perceptually to agree to an injury settlement, particularly because this circumstance frequently involves late-round picks or undrafted players with split contracts. A split contract has a “down amount” according to the CBA minimum for his years of service which is significantly less than the full amount of the contract; this down amount is what players are paid while on IR. For teams, an injury settlement saves money by not having to pay the player for a full season of injured reserve.

Frequently teams will opt to keep a player on season-long IR, even without an injury that would be expected to keep him out all year, for the sake of retaining the player in their program. Players don’t count toward the 53-man active/inactive list but do count against the salary cap while on IR, which serves to dissuade teams from hoarding young players this way.

For the six people left on this page, I’ll continue with the divine sickness of roster contortionism.

A new agreement this year amending the 2022 letter regarding roster lists allows for up to two players to go on IR without spending at least a day on the 53-man active/inactive list (as had been the case prior) without being lost for the season. In order for those players to be eligible to return, they must be designated as such on final cutdown day at the time they’re placed on this list; these stipulations apply as well to the reserve/non-football injury/illness list, commonly referred to as NFI, but not the physically unable to perform (PUP) list.

The last note above is critical as it pertains to the 2024 Cleveland Browns. Nick Chubb has been on PUP and will be eligible to return at a later date (after a minimum of four games) without using one of the two DFR tags available during final cuts. A team can use a total of eight DFRs during the regular season (there’s a regular-plus-postseason total of 10), only two though can be used on players who spend camp with the team but aren’t on the initial 53.

Michael Dunn and Nyheim Hines were both put on reserve/NFI (as opposed to training camp’s active/NFI) on August 27, and as such they could both have been designated for return when the reserve list was created (which they probably were, though the reporting is nebulous). Both of them are more important to the team this year than Wypler and it would certainly make sense for the Browns’ front office to use their two DFRs on Dunn and Hines.

Anyone still here? It’s OK. I love hearing the echo of my own obsession with manipulating the CBA to generate an advantage in terms of team construction.

Wypler cannot be designated for return in this scenario. But if he were to reach an injury settlement with the Browns, he’d be eligible to (but wouldn’t have to) catch on with another team at the end of the timeframe the settlement was for. Three weeks after that he could be re-signed by Cleveland.

There’s a near certainty that something here has been misreported (or perhaps misinterpreted by me). But the fact that Wypler wasn’t put on IR immediately following his broken ankle August 10 — which has been allowed without injury waivers since the inception of the 2020 CBA — seems to indicate that the Browns wanted to avoid having him out all year.

I’m often critical of front office maneuverings when it’s obvious there’s a better way to accomplish the goal of putting the best product on the field, so it’s also important to give credit when warranted. If this is the plan for Wypler to rejoin the team this season without counting toward the initial 53 or the DFR limits, it seems brilliant. If it’s not the plan, maybe it should be.

And if you made it this far, we should have a beer because you’re the only person who appreciates these minutial details the way I do. Cheers.

—@PoisonPill4