PHOENIX — Just when the Browns are close to digging out from under Deshaun Watson’s fully-guaranteed $230 million contract, Browns GM Andrew Berry revealed Sunday that it might not be over just yet.
By Mary Kay Cabot, cleveland.com
If Watson wins the quarterback battle and plays well, the Browns could always bring him back for more.
In fact, when Berry first traded three first-round picks and more in 2022 for Watson, he said he hoped it would be a 10-year proposition and not just the original five.
So when it comes to Watson vs. Shedeur Sanders and whoever else is in the quarterback room this offseason, his expiring contract -- worth $46 million a year — won’t be a factor.
“We’re probably just more focused on performance and best players,” Berry told a small group of Browns beat writers at the NFL owners meetings here. “Certainly time horizon factors into that, but just with any veteran player, there’s no rule against extending the player’s contract if they perform and they do well. So I wouldn’t necessarily box it into any one approach. It really will be performance-based.”
Berry also re-iterated that no one has a leg up in the competition at this point. All three quarterbacks currently on the roster — including 2025 third-round pick Dillon Gabriel — are on equal footing heading into the start of the offseason program on April 7.
“I’d say as we sit here on March 29th, and nobody has touched the grass, nobody has really worked with our coaching staff, I wouldn’t handicap it for anyone,” Berry said. “I think everyone in that room deserves opportunity. And so we’ll certainly know a lot more as we get to the spring. We’ll know even more as we get to camp. But I think honestly, we wouldn’t be doing the right thing for the team, we wouldn’t be doing the right thing for that position if we didn’t go in with it eyes wide open.”
What’s more, he acknowledged that it’s “wholly realistic” for the Browns to add another quarterback to the mix, most likely a younger one. The Browns have hosted Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson for a top 30 pre-draft visit and will spend more time on him. They’ll also consider other QBs in the draft and elsewhere, and Berry won’t “rule out any method of acquisition.”
But the Browns seem eager to see what Sanders can do in his second season with an upgraded supporting cast, a new scheme and a new head coach in Todd Monken, who cited his elite playmaking ability last month at the NFL Combine. With Berry and Monken both noting that Sanders has a long way to go, can he make up that ground by the opener?
“That’s a little bit TBD (to be determined), because all of our guys coming in, they’re going to learn a new offensive system,” Berry said. “We’re going to have a fair amount of turnover on that side of the ball. They’ll have new teammates to learn, which is why the spring will be really important for the guys that are at the offseason program for us to really, really get a sense of their progress year over year.”
He noted that Sanders has been “working really hard. I would expect him to take a step forward and we’ll deal with that kind of week-by-week and month-by-month.”
The quarterback competition will get underway at Browns headquarters in just over a week, and if Watson lives up to his vow to be better than ever, it might not be his last season in Browns uniform after all.
https://www.cleveland.com/browns/20...ract-qb-battle-is-performance-based.html
