Navigating a rising salary cap bill will be one of the biggest challenges facing Browns vice president of football operations and general manager Andrew Berry this offseason.
The curse of building a playoff team is that it becomes increasingly difficult to retain everyone, even, at times, key starters. Nowadays, there are a number of savvy cap tactics a team can utilize to prolong a Super Bowl window, but those strategies aren’t a simple copy and paste for every contract. Each deal with a player is uniquely different and some are easier to manipulate to create cap savings than others.
It’s up to Berry to sort through those details. And as he spends the weeks ahead looking for ways to balance Cleveland’s book, there’s a deal he’s likely to discover he regrets.
Back in December of 2022 the Browns rewarded veteran right tackle Jack Conklin with a four-year, $60 million extension after the ex-Titan bounced back from a season-ending knee injury to play 14 games that season. Still, the injury one year prior should have been a red flag.
Fast forward to 2023 and the deal almost instantly became a problem after Conklin tore both the ACL and MCL in his left knee during the Browns season opener. The team was now set to pay a nearing 30-year-old tackle, coming off two serious knee surgeries in a three year span more than $28 million in guaranteed money over the next four years
