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The perfect place to start this week’s Four Verts column is with the Cleveland Browns, who have clearly decided to punt the next few seasons after giving out the worst contract in NFL history.
Browns are quiet-quitting and it’s their own fault
Let’s call what’s happening in Cleveland what it is: embarrassing. A flat-out embarrassment.
The Browns have decided to give up entirely on the 2024 season by continuing to start the worst, most expensive quarterback in football and now have to figure out what their roster looks like for the future while they have a titan-sized albatross in the lineup in Deshaun Watson. At 1-5 and with no hope to get anything accomplished this year, the Browns this week started stripping down their roster for draft picks with their first in-season trade of wide receiver Amari Cooper to the Bills for a third-round draft selection. That’s a move that will make one of the worst offenses in league history even worse, a move the Browns were almost forced to make due to the horrendous return on the Watson trade.
The Browns’ future outlook is bleak.
Based on his contract, they’ll have to sit through Watson playing for at least one more season before the Browns can start to move off of his $230 million deal. According to Spotrac, the Browns can’t even think about getting rid of Watson unless it’s going to be a trade that happens after June 1 — which would still come with a hefty $81 million dead cap charge spread out over two seasons.
That plan comes with one massive problem: who in their right mind would trade for Watson? It’s a PR disaster and he’s a bad quarterback now. Unless a team is willing to do a Brock Osweiler-type deal and send a first-round pick or two with Watson, he’s going to be on the roster in 2025.
That puts a cap on what’s possible on the field before even getting to how the actual salary-cap space works out. According to Spotrac, the Browns are $40 million over the projected cap space for next season — and the trade of Cooper forced an immovable $22.5 million dead cap charge for next season. That means the Browns still have a lot of work to do before they can become cap compliant and they’ll have to work around a massive cap hit for a player who’s not even on the team anymore. That’s incredibly damaging for their ability to actually add credible players this offseason.
They’re way over the cap, Watson has a cap hit of over $72 million in 2025 and they’ve done a horrific job drafting over the past few seasons (although I gave them a B grade for this year’s selections) and don’t have much by the way of young, cheap talent they can lean on. The only way they can start to put together a team for next year, which won’t have many big-time free agents joining, is to start stockpiling draft picks for cheap contracts to add to the 2025 roster, which is almost guaranteed to be a terrible team.
They’re not going to bench Watson, so this is what it is. The Browns are a bad team with a failing infrastructure and one of the worst starting QBs in league history. They made this bed, it’s going to cost people their jobs and they face a LONG road back to positive relevancy. Even after the Watson saga ends, they’ll still have to draft and develop a quarterback of the future, which takes a long time in its own right. Hopefully, for their fans and the league, the Browns can return to relevance before the next decade starts. It really might be that long.
Hey! Some of these divisions need to wake up!
The 2024 NFL season has been a lot of fun as new and old characters from the league’s evolving landscape have put their imprint on the league this year. While there have been a lot of fantastic individual performances, a lot of teams are stuck in the mud right now and a handful of divisional races feel like they’re close to being over this early in the season.
Tight divisional races make the middle and end portion of the regular season so entertaining. Sadly, a few divisions aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.
The AFC South is in a bad spot with the Texans being 5-1 while the rest of the division fights to keep their seasons alive. The three other teams have five wins combined, with the Titans and Jaguars each having one victory apiece. The Texans’ only competition is the Colts, who sit at 3-3 with some shaky quarterback play for the majority of the season. Unless Indianapolis’ passing game can settle in, Houston is going to run away with the division on the back of its pass rush and elite quarterback play from C.J. Stroud. Come on, wake up, Colts. Don’t let this race be decided by Halloween.
The Jets made a last-ditch effort to save the AFC East this week, but were immediately rebuffed by the Bills. Right after the Jets traded for star wide receiver Davante Adams, the Bills acquired Amari Cooper from the Browns to bolster their own wide receiver room. That was a perfect stiff-arm by the Bills’ front office after going into MetLife Stadium and taking down the Jets. At 4-2 with a two-game lead, and tiebreaker over the Jets, they have a strong command of the division. If the Jets can catch fire following the Adams trade, they have a chance to get back into this, but they’re in a deep hole right now. The Dolphins and Patriots? No. NO.
The AFC West isn’t filled with complete losers, but they likely aren’t as good as their records suggest. The Chiefs are 5-0 and still look to be one of the best defenses in the league. The Chargers and Broncos are both sitting in a spot with three wins entering Week 7, but they’re both rebuilding and not ready to be a nuisance in the playoffs. Neither team has enough juice to make that happen, but there are some building blocks for each squad. Meanwhile, the Raiders are throttling toward the bottom of the league as they prepare to embark on a true rebuild after this season. This is still the Chiefs’ division — and will be for the foreseeable future.
That’s three of the eight divisions! Almost half feel like they’re on the verge of being decided before the midway point of the season. NFL fans deserve better! On behalf of all football enthusiasts, please get it together in the name of entertainment.
The NFC North, though? This is what it’s all about
The NFC North is on the opposite spectrum as the aforementioned divisions. All of the NFC North’s teams are good and all of them would have the ability to win other divisions across the league. Unfortunately, there can be only one winner here.
Each club has a credible case to believe it can win the NFC North and every team has at least four wins heading into Week 7. The amount of divisional games are about to ratchet up, which will start separating the NFL’s best division as the playoffs inch closer.
Chicago fans have to be feeling great right now. The Bears’ defense and special teams held strong and got them a couple wins before the offense broke out and scored over 30 points in back to back games to help them get to 4-2. Caleb Williams has come along and started to show off the reasons why he was drafted No. 1 overall with no real consideration to another candidate. The arm strength, accuracy and mobility have given the Bears’ defense the counterpart Chicago needed to give itself a future for sustainable winning. Now, it will get harder than playing the Panthers and Jaguars, but the Bears are a real threat to win the division even with a rookie quarterback starting.
Detroit is arguably the best team in the NFC following its 47-9 drubbing of Dallas. Its offense is capable of scoring against anyone, especially with how well the Lions run the ball and throw play-action off of it. An offense this good gives the Lions a Super Bowl ceiling and they have an improved defensive backfield to give them a higher ceiling on defense as well. Losing star edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson for the rest of the season is a huge blow, but they might have enough talent to go on a run without him. This roster is in a great spot.
The Vikings were off this past week, but nothing has changed about their lead over the division. They’re the only undefeated team in the NFC North. They’ve done it on the backs of an elite defense and some unexpected high quality play by quarterback Sam Darnold. Time will tell if Darnold is the man to lead a run through the playoffs and win the Super Bowl, but the Vikings will continue to rack up regular-season wins as long as they play defense this well. This is a coaching masterclass that will be fascinating to watch in the division.
Green Bay is playing fantastic football, too. Jordan Love is continuing to emerge as an elite quarterback and the young offensive playmakers continue to get better each week. The only concerning part of this team is its pass rush, but the rest of the club is in a good spot to make something interesting happen this postseason.
This division is as good as it was advertised to be during the preseason and it will only get more tight as the regular season moves along.
What are the Steelers doing?
Let’s keep this one brief because there isn’t all that much to express besides confusion.
The Steelers are making the contrarian move of benching quarterback Justin Fields after a 4-2 start, where they’re tied with the Ravens for the AFC North lead. The idea of sitting Fields, even at 4-2, is not indefensible. What doesn’t make sense is putting Russell Wilson in the lineup over him — it’s not 2015!
The Steelers could squeeze more juice from their offense this year, but that’s not necessarily Fields’ fault, at least not entirely. He certainly has his limitations in the passing game, but there’s no denying that his legs have been a positive asset for the Steelers and they just had their best game of the season on offense against the Raiders on Sunday.
The biggest reason why the Steelers’ passing game is mid is because they don’t have many playmakers on the outside. George Pickens is OK, but he’s ideally a No. 2 wideout in a good offense. His lack of attention to detail hurts Pittsburgh’s passing game and the Steelers don’t have many weapons outside of him. Wilson isn’t going to fix that. It’s an unsolvable problem until the offseason.
It seemed like the sensible play was to see what Fields had through the end of the season and then assess his long-term potential after the season. Wilson is not the future. Based on last year with Denver, he’s probably not even the present. This is a weird move that caps an already beleaguered Steelers offense because they’re losing the dynamism that Fields brings with his legs.
Whatever, the Steelers will still probably finish 10-7 and then get blasted in the wild-card round, which is fine.