For the first time in a long time, the Cleveland Browns need to worry about the NFL’s salary cap. Thanks to big-ticket imports like Odell Beckham Jr., Sheldon Richardson and Olivier Vernon as well as pricey holdovers Jarvis Landry and Joel Bitonio, the Browns lack the cap flexibility to do much more shopping in free agency.
There is still cap room available, but it isn’t without future earmarks.
The figures from Over The Cap and Spotrac differ slightly, but both list the Browns as having just over $34.7 million still available for 2019.
Having the money for 2019 doesn’t mean GM John Dorsey and the Browns can still go hog wild, however. They project to have less cap room in 2020 than 2019, and the team might want to carry over cap room to afford new contracts for veterans like Joe Schobert, Damarious Randall and J.C. Tretter. All will be free agents next offseason if the team doesn’t lock them up with extensions this year.
There are always ways to finagle the finances, of course. But at this point, the days of freewheeling acquisitions appear over.
That’s a good thing. Needing to lock up current talent with deserving new contracts is a better situation than desperately spending to bring new players in from the outside.
