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How The Cleveland Browns Spending Is Sustainable And Other Teams Won't Like It
The Cleveland Browns have been top two spenders for the last three years in the league but the way in which they are doing it is entirely sustainable. How are they doing it and why aren't every team in the league copying them?

For anyone who is following the NFL it is pretty clear that the Cleveland Browns are operating in a different way to everyone else, even the other financially aggressive teams like the Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints who also use void years to push the salary cap out. Andrew Berry isn’t shy about throwing the word aggressive around every time he speaks but he follows it up with his actions.

During the 2022 season, the Cleveland Browns were the second highest spenders in terms of cash spending $276m on their roster despite the NFL salary cap being at $208m. The only team ahead of them was the Las Angeles Rams at $283m. In total only five teams crossed $250m of cash spending that season.

If we go back to the 2021 season the salary cap dropped dramatically due to the pandemic coming in at $183m, this didn’t stop the Cleveland Browns who spent $239m that year in cash. This meant they were first in the NFL with the next nearest team being the New England Patriots at $235m. Here we see the Rams balancing out their spending as they had the lowest spend in the league with $138m.

Here is the table for the last two years of cash spending based on the published data from the NFLPA, numbers are in millions.


According to Over The Cap, the Browns currently lead the NFL for cash spending during the 2023 season too. They are $20m ahead of the Miami Dolphins in second but this will fluctuate until we get a final 53-man roster around the time of the season.

So let us look at how the Browns have managed to build a completely sustainable model where they can lead the league in cash spending two of the last three years and then finish 2nd in the other year.

WHY CASH AND NOT CAP
For this article, we are focusing on cash and not the salary cap numbers in terms of how much the Browns are spending and there is an important reason for this. Cash spending is much more stable year to year and is what teams and agents focus on during a negotiation because this is what the players are getting paid. You can then use a signing bonus rather than a base salary to move around how the same money appears on the salary cap.

Let us take a look at Dalvin Tomlinson’s deal as an example. So here is the contract below and you can read the full breakdown of his deal here.



Then let us look at this deal in terms of cash and the salary cap. Firstly we can see the four-year contract counts as five years due to void years in the deal to backload the signing bonus. As we can see from the cash figures we get a really steady cash flow on the deal per year.



This is effectively a two-year deal worth $28m for the first two seasons and then team options worth $14.5m in 2025 and 2026 so if they decide after two seasons to use a post-June 1st cut here would be the numbers.

Tracking salary cap spending from year to year suddenly becomes really messy because you are looking at dead cap numbers two years into the future. While dead cap is not bad thing it is better to use cash to follow the teams spending year to year as it will end up on the salary cap eventually.



CASH SPENDING ON THE 53 MAN ROSTER
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, the most likely comes in two formats, 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. Ken Ingalls, who covers the salary cap, predicts this to be around $10m a year.

The other factor can be dead cash spending, while a player like John Johnson won’t impact these numbers because all of the cash he was given was during the 2021 & 2022 seasons Baker Mayfield will. To facilitate a trade to the Panthers the Browns converted $10.5m of his 5th-year option base salary into a signing bonus so it would be dead cap on the Browns' book and make him cheaper for Carolina.

I haven’t factored this sort of spending into the model as it is so rare, the Browns wouldn’t have over $500,000 for a player in this category for their first three years with the exception of Mayfield. Where Odell Beckham Jr. made the final 53 to start the season his full contract is considered as they expected him to play the season.

WHAT DO THE LAST THREE YEARS LOOK LIKE
Here is a chart looking at the last three seasons and this one based on their current contract for how many millions the salary cap is, their top 53 cash spending, and the percentage based on the salary cap.

For the 2021 season impacted by Covid, I have used an average of 2020 and 2022 to give us a realistic number in the middle. Considering they had the remaining rollover left from the Sashi Brown regime, they effectively used this to fill the gap in 2021.




So we can see a trend here of them spending around 115% of the salary cap each season, this is why I thought going and adding a big-ticket wide receiver in a trade and focusing on someone like Elijah Moore or Jerry Jeudy always made more sense from the beginning of the offseason.

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 a full 15% every year to cover their spending. 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 2025 salary cap in terms of cash spending on the 53, practice squad, injured reserve, and everything else. Then once we get to 2024 they will probably look to spend the 2026 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 the competition. This is why I think they are working on around 115% rather than pushing this out to say 125% as there is then too much potential for it to blow up in their faces.

HOW WILL THE NEXT THREE YEARS LOOK
So, if we use 115% of the salary cap each year as the aim for spending on the final 53 then we can see what the next three seasons might look like based on Over The Cap’s projection for what the salary cap might be for those years.




We can then also look at this in chart format too.



I also have a breakdown of where the Browns' current spending is per position room over the next few years. We are only using players who are currently under contract so any player who is a free agent drops off the 53 and is replaced by a league minimum contract.



WHY AREN’T OTHER TEAMS DOING THIS
There are three factors why other teams might not be doing what the Browns and Andrew Berry are doing:

1 - 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.

2 - They want the ability to go all in for a two-year spell which would allow them to spend much more than the Browns in a one or two-year window before having to balance it out.

3 - 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.



https://247sports.com/nfl/cleveland...er-teams-wont-like-it-208080026/#2147901