On Saturday, as explained in the attached video, I nearly fell ass first into a hole in my yard that contained a nest of yellow jackets.
On Sunday, I fell into the abyss of figuring out whether and to what extent the Browns received cash — and cap credit — for up to $91,801,463 in insurance under quarterback Deshaun Watson’s $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract.
The Browns aren’t commenting on the issue. (If they’d just come out and address it, it would be a hell of a lot easier.) We obtained NFLPA records reflecting the breakdowns, and apparent cap credits, that the Browns have received for 2024 and 2025 and will receive for 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029 for injuries that caused him to miss most of the 2023 season, most of the 2024 season, and all of the 2025 season.
The numbers, we believed, added up to more than $88 million. Which made sense on the surface, given the number of games he missed and the available insurance.
The folks at Over The Cap disputed the calculation, explaining that the number is $9.834 million.
We’ll defer to their cap expertise. However, that figure seemed way too low, given the number of games Watson missed and the amount of insurance that was available.
So we went back to the drawing board. And we consulted with a very experienced and seasoned cap specialist, one who knows how to accurately (unlike me) interpret the things appearing — and not appearing — in the relevant NFLPA records.
Per the source with whom we collaborated, the actual cap credit for the games missed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 will be $25.824 million. The difference comes from the fact that, as the source believes, a credit of $3,997,386 that first appears in the 2026 breakdown following the March 6, 2026 restructuring of the deal will be (and perhaps already should be) reflected four more times.
Even that number seems low, given the available insurance and the games Watson has missed. As another source explained it, there are two potential explanations for this. Either the Browns didn’t purchase the maximum insurance that Watson’s contract permitted them to buy or they did and the policy had specific provisions that limited the payout to $25.824 million. (Generally speaking, insurance companies like to take money in but they hate paying it out, since money is their sole commodity.)
Regardless, that’s the figure that someone who is absolutely in an ideal position to interpret the NFLPA data shared with PFT. (And, yes, I should have checked with that person in the first place.)
So we missed it by that much. But we tried. Sometimes, you grab a fence at the last second before landing in a nest of yellow jackets.
Sometimes, there’s no fence.
Here’s the broader reality. High-dollar contracts routinely contain provisions allowing teams to purchase insurance. The question of whether it was purchased and the extent to which proceeds were paid (and cap dollars were refunded) isn’t nearly as easy to navigate as the basic cap calculations based on proration and other niceties of the CBA, because there’s far less transparency on such matters.
Again, the Browns could easily clarify and confirm this situation. But they don’t have to, so they won’t.
