You are taking 2 different ideas and combing them. He is guaranteed 230m over 5 years with even payout every year. That matters not at all though. From a cap perspective they are going to be paying him 220m over 4 years and he will only be playing football for those 4 years so they are paying 229m for a guy to play QB for them for 4 years with 220m being paid over those 4 years or 55m. That is what they are paying for. From a cap perspective they are paying 220m over 4 years. It doesnt matter that he got 46 million total this year because they made 45m of it guaranteed bonus (to get around a suspension) so only 10m of that cap hit is this year and only 1m do they get back.
Josh Allen is better than Watson and it is not close. He is making 43 so if we were being logical value is somewhere between 40 and 43m per year and they are paying 55m. That is an insane overpay. Mahomes signed his deal specifically so that it would do exactly what it did. His deal was unique which is why Josh Allen did not top it because 43m over that short timeframe with a 2nd big contract would end up being higher than 45m. However both Rodgers and Watson were able to effectively force their teams to above and beyond market value which is a disaster for both teams (already seen the Packers having to let good players go because they cannot afford them anymore).
The salary cap is already catching up to them. They do not have the money to sign any day1 free agent and their own guys. It just simply does not exist so next year so they are going to have to restructure the deals and they will be stuck with trying to find some lower tier starters to fill out their roster. That is the realistic number on the Browns. IF they had been able to trade Baker and get an extra 20m that might have been enough to sign a real player next year and be a real contender but they couldn't (hence why they are so frustrated). Basically they will last through this year and next year but 2024 is the reckoning if they decide to sign their own guys next offseason, which they should.
Their original plan was good, go all in on Watson for the next 3-4 years trade Baker to free up the money to do that and see if you can win something but they made a deal with a devil and now they are bit. They lose year 1, when their roster will be strongest because it is not going to be getting better. They could not trade Baker. This leaves them all in on year 2 on a QB who will have not played a snap in 2 years with players he has never thrown a ball to in a live game and just hoping it clicks. That is now a terrible bet all because they wanted an "adult" in the room (and somehow went with the guy who had, then, 22 sexual assault allegations as the adult).
1. Well it matters a great deal what he gets paid, because cash is arguably more important than cap.
The reality is that $220M won't be for four years... it'll be for longer than that. Because he'll get an extension long before that, and they'll take some of that money and stretch it out into future years.
And that's why the average total is irrelevant. Its variable, not fixed. It can be manipulated, adjusted, etc. The only thing, for sure, is that once cash is paid, eventually, cap follows.
The other reality you're ignoring is that the opportunity cost of paying him for a year where he doesn't play is a HUGE part of this. Deshaun Watson almost certainly doesn't agree to a deal with the Browns if he's getting Josh Allen's contract. That's kind of the whole point.
I'm not going to debate the "rankings of QBs", other than to say that, based on historical performance, you could make a strong argument Watson is better than Allen. Wouldn't be a particularly hard argument to make either.
I think there's some obvious, inherent recency bias in your take.
2. Why do they need money to sign day 1 free agents? What kinds of holes on their roster do they have that the need day 1 FAs to fill them? Why is that important at all?
Already mentioned the fact that you're totally naïve if you think Watson is going to count $55M against the cap next year. He'll be $15-20M less than that, which is all the cap space you'd need to sign literally any non-QB free agent you want. And he's just one restructure. There are other extensions/restructures available, as well as roster cuts.
The real comedy I see here is how you manage to keep shifting the narrative. First it's "they don't have any draft picks", of which they have plenty, and then its "well they can't sign day 1 free agents", which they can.
And if they couldn't, you root for a team that practically never did until about a year or two ago, and were super competitive doing so. Why you think other teams can't do that blows my mind. Especially a team with a pretty good draft track record recently, like the Browns.
