Cleveland Browns’ Bold Spending Strategy is More Sustainable Than You Think

Here is a look at the most recent five years of cash spending. The 2021 - 2024 numbers are using NFLPA data and the current year is using Over The Cap but this figure can move through the season based on extensions and roster moves.

Across the five years individually the Browns have ranked:
2021 - 1st
2022 - 2nd
2o23 - 11th
2024 - 3rd
2025 - 5th

Cash spending and the salary cap often get mixed up but it is important to understand what the role of each is as it is what creates an unfair playing field between the poor teams and the rich teams.

Cash Spending - This is how much a player is paid each year of their contract. This is the key part of any negotiation between a team and an agent because the player isn't going to mind how the team deals with the salary cap as long as the money arrives in their bank account.

Salary Cap - Once a player is given any money by the team this is how team spending is accounted for by the league. Initially, this was designed to create parity but it doesn't work as well as it used to as smart legal minds working for NFL teams have created methods to allow for greater cash spending.

Spreading The Salary Cap Costs Out

A good player to use as an example to understand what is happening with the Cleveland Browns model is Dalvin Tomlinson, his most likely career with the team is going to be two years in Cleveland followed by a post-June 1st cut on the first day of the 2025 league year.

Despite being with the team for two years his salary cap costs will actually be spread out over four different accounting years.

The salary cap and the cash above are both $28m so it isn't costing the team any extra money to do it this way it is just managing their finances as the salary cap grows.

Some teams like to make the cash and the salary cap match each year, so if we look at how much this is against the salary cap. Then compare it to how the Cleveland Browns backload the salary cap hits during the deal.

Despite both examples resulting in $28m of cash being paid to the player, cash spending accounts for 11.8% of salary cap spending then comparing this to the 10.3% of salary cap spending this resulted in spreading out the cap hits.

The Cleveland Browns are currently tied fourth in the league with 11 players who are earning more than $10m a year. Only Broncos (14), Vikings (13) and Bears (12) are ahead of them with Colts also having 11.

If we look at the average per year values of those deals, the Cleveland Browns are paying $209m a year average to those players.

If they backload all of those deals, here is the impact on the salary cap.

That is 66.0% of the salary cap rather than 74.9% of it, this is what allows the Cleveland Browns to spend $48m a year more than the league average.

The salary cap will keep increasing so spreading the cap hits out over a longer period is sensible for all teams.

These are worked on the players being on the team for three years and then given a post June 1st cut. They aren't all going to be done this way. Many of the best players you will keep long term beyond 2027. Some might go quicker, so it is just to give a sample of what is realistic and average.

While the name dead cap might sound menacing and something teams should avoid what we have just seen with the Tomlinson example is that by structuring a deal to spread the salary cap charges out the team has given themselves the ability to spend more money.

Dead cap is only money counting on the salary cap once the player is gone, it would be like getting an interest-free loan for four years and having to pay for the holiday when you get back. The loan still needs paying, hasn't cost you anything extra but you've already had the holiday.

If you knew your annual earnings were going to increase by 10% each year for the rest of your life and someone offered you interest-free loans, you would be mad not to take advantage and enjoy the money now. It is worth so much more to pay it back because in five years time, as $1 is going to be worth less than it is now due to inflation.

The Cleveland Browns have got very close to doing it this offseason with only Greg Newsome and Ethan Pocic having base salaries of $3.5m or more there is no reason every team in the league doesn't do this with all of their players. If Newsome was signed to an extension then they would be the league minimum but as he is on a fifth year option while the team decides his future.

They don't need to spend the cap space now and the plan should then be to roll it all into the next season so if you need to move on from that player you can but at the same time teams would then be sat there with $100m+ of cap space annually if they ever wanted to make a splash move.

The issue is some owners would rather have fans believe the salary cap is what is stopping them spending more on the team, instead it is the owner not wanting to give that money to the team they own.

So, we are going to focus on how much the Cleveland Browns are spending in cash on their 53-man roster each year versus the salary cap to get an idea of the pattern they are taking currently.

There is some spending that a team will make in cash that doesn’t impact the 53-man roster such as the practice squad and replacing players on injured reserve with free agents. Since this is generally going to be pretty standard across each year we won’t worry about it in our numbers but will help explain how my 53 spending might be lower than the NFLPA numbers I used earlier. 

Cash Per Year

If we look at the six years of Andrew Berry's time as Cleveland Browns general manager we can see how much cash he has spent on his 53-man roster compared to what the salary cap has been. The 2022 season was likely over-inflated by the $10.5m they had to pay Baker Mayfield to leave and came down slightly for 2023 as a percentage of the salary cap.

Also the 2021 salary cap was much lower due to the pandemic, I have used a middle ground between 2020 and 2022 not to skew the data.

How Is This Sustainable

So, to look at how this model is sustainable for the Browns we need to look at how their spending balances against the salary cap each year and a chart is the easiest model for this.

The salary cap isn’t going to jump 20% every year to cover their spending from 2022 to 2024. They are working roughly two years out in advance so as the salary keeps rising they will keep spending more as a percentage of the salary cap.

So, this year the Browns are likely looking to spend the 2027 salary cap in terms of cash spending on the 53, practice squad, injured reserve, and everything else. Then once we get to 2026 they will probably look to spend the projected 2028 salary cap number.

The only thing that could stop the Browns is another dramatic drop in the salary cap as we saw during the pandemic. Otherwise, it is a really smart model to allow you to outspend all of your competitors and put together a more expensive roster than anyone else. It is a balancing act though, the reason I see them being around 120% rather than pushing this out to say 130% is to avoid too much potential for it to blow up in their faces if you are relying on spending the salary cap three years in advance, anything could happen with TV deals etc.

There are three main factors why other teams might not be doing what the Cleveland Browns and Andrew Berry are doing:

1 - Lack Of Front Office Vision

They just aren’t as aggressive and smart to work this out on how you can weaponize the salary cap to give you the best possible team year in and year out.

While this might seem silly to say and how can some guy in England sat behind a keyboard work it out but we only have to look at how slow professional sports are to catch up. Why did basketball wait so long to embrace the three point shot. Converting an idea and having a general manager to convince an owner to spend $50m a year more than average isn't always the easiest thing to do.

2 - Talent To Pay

You need to have the talent to give massive contracts too and that means drafting well as the first point. While it might seem like there is lots of great talent in free agency most players signed to major deals aren't on that team for year three of the contract. They are regularly overpaid and underperform their deals. You need to find the talent on cheap rookie deals and then extend them early.

This is why it is essential Andrew Berry adds more draft picks via trading down, keeps having success in the draft, and finds the next wave of talent to extend.

You don't want to go the Rams route of trading all the best picks for expensive veterans, having a really expensive team plus a group of cheap rookie contract players is a perfect combination.

3 - Cash Poor Ownership

Their owners just aren't as cash-rich as the Haslams. While people might have opinions on Browns' ownership on how they have hired and been involved, one thing they haven't been shy about is spending money at an incredible level on the 53-man roster. All teams will have cash budgets they spend each season and it is clear that the Browns have one of the most generous owners in supporting Andrew Berry's goals.

The NFLPA must love what the Cleveland Browns are doing, they have given over $1.4bn to players in the league over the last three years. Then we compare that to someone like the Saints who are just under $0.95bn during that same period. The union will never sign off on any rule change that takes that much money out of the pockets of their players. If anything they will be hoping more teams are watching what the Browns are doing and then copy the model.

Other teams might moan and then have to let players go because their owner doesn't want to pay the cash but if the Browns are successful over the next few years every general manager will be knocking on the doors of their ownership and explaining the model and how they need to copy it else they will be left behind.