NFL teams have no right to be mad at the Browns regarding Deshaun Watson's contract
The Cleveland Browns made a controversial decision to not only trade for Deshaun Watson, but to also immediately sign him to a fully-guaranteed $230 million deal. It is no secret that the 22 pending civil lawsuits against him now hang over the franchise as well.
This stirred up plenty of controversy among fans over the decision to add someone like Watson, given the allegations against him. It also created controversy among NFL owners, but for very different reasons.
Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had a quote, shared by ESPN's Jamison Hensley, that summed up how the owners are feeling.
"I don't know that he should've been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that's something that is groundbreaking, and it'll make negotiations harder with others."
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti on Deshaun Watson's $230 million guaranteed contract: "I don't know that he should've been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that's something that is groundbreaking, and it'll make negotiations harder with others."
Bisciotti is blatantly saying that this Watson deal is going to make negotiations harder with others. The quarterback was given a record amount of guaranteed money. This has changed the way top stars will view appropriate deals. But are the Browns in the wrong here?
NFL owners have no logical right to get mad at the Browns over Deshaun Watson
The NFL owners have always given off the sense of being a tight-knit group. Yet it's not like large contracts are rare. Just a few years ago, Patrick Mahomes was given a decade-long deal worth nearly half-a-billion dollars. Sure, it was not fully guaranteed, but it set a new standard.
Just recently, Aaron Rodgers got $150 million guaranteed from the Green Bay Packers and set the market at $50 million annually. Were other owners mad at these two teams?
The beauty of the NFL for the owners is the salary cap. So there eventually becomes a cap to how high they can go, at least, on a yearly basis. Yet as the cap rises, so do the salaries.
: apple.co/3tEfgI9Former Browns’ CEO @JoeBanner13 believes Deshaun Watson’s fully-guaranteed, $230 million contract will change the way NFL contracts are done from now on.
🎧: apple.co/3tEfgI9 https://t.co/F2azm7s3Nb
The cap also means each team can act however it wants. If the Browns want to fully guarantee a deal, they have the right to do that.
For example, let's say Lamar Jackson wants the exact same deal as Watson got in Cleveland but Baltimore will not give it to him. If another team will do such a thing, then that is just the nature of the business. The only way to stop this process is for every single owner to refuse to offer such a deal.
This is just the way professional sports work. If one team doesn't want to pay a star, there is usually another out there ready to do just that. The salary cap, at least, ensures a system where one team can't spend significantly more than others to buy up all the stars.
So even if the quarterback market rises, it is an even playing field for every single NFL owner out there. Blaming the Browns here is just recency bias after years and years of innovation when it comes to contracts.
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