After the Rams lost to the Eagles in the divisional round (L.A. gave Philly its toughest game of the entire postseason), quarterback Matthew Stafford said he wanted to take some time to think about his future.
It didn’t take much. With Rams coach Sean McVay adding in the aftermath of the season-ending playoff loss that the Rams hoped to get clarity on Stafford’s situation “sooner than later,” preliminary clarity came by the end of the month. Stafford reportedly plans to play in 2025.
That’s not the end. It’s the beginning. Due to make only $27 million in 2025, Stafford needs a bump to at least 50 percent of the top of the $60 million market at the position. Which means that the Rams and Stafford need to work out a new deal.
Last year, Stafford started clamoring for a revised contract in the immediate aftermath of round one of the draft, when the Rams didn’t pick his potential replacement. While both sides kept the process quiet, it lingered until the very start of training camp — and almost didn’t get done.
Now, what will the Rams do? His cap number for 2025 is nearly $50 million. Cutting him with a post-June 1 designation would result in a $26.67 million cap charge for 2026, with a $4 million guaranteed roster bonus owed to Stafford. Trading him before June 1 (and before the $4 million roster bonus comes due) would spark a $37 million cap charge.
Although it’s not as dire as the Deshaun Watson debacle in Cleveland, the Rams have a mess. They could kick the cap can by extending his contract, but he’s 37. At what point will the Rams (who are young at most positions) pivot to someone more than a decade younger than Stafford?
For now, it’s just a weird vibe. And with several teams looking for quarterbacks — Jets, Steelers, Browns, Titans, Raiders, Giants, Saints (maybe) — the Rams likely remain open for business.
Remember, when G.M. Les Snead was asked about the possibility of trading Stafford? Snead didn’t say, “Next question.” He said, "[I]t’ll take someone calling or us reaching out if we want to do that. Those are the things that’ll be determined down the road here.”
So those things are still to be determined. With the Scouting Combine starting next week in Indianapolis, it could be determined there.
Two weeks ago, Browns defensive end Myles Garrett made known his desire to leave the Browns. The Browns reportedly won’t do it. Garrett apparently won’t abandon his desire to go to a contender.
The current odds at DraftKings have Garrett taking his next snap with a team that went farther than the Browns have gone since the late 1980s.
The Commanders are +300 favorites to land Garrett.
Next are the Eagles, at +450. His current team lands at 5-1.
The Bills are +550, and the Lions have +650 odds. The Bears come in at +900.
If the Browns were to decide to make taking on Deshaun Watson’s remaining $92 million in guaranteed pay one of the trade terms, the Commanders could pull it off. They have nearly $100 million in cap space for 2025.
Still, absorbing Watson’s albatross deal complicates the rest of the trade talks. The draft-pick compensation would drop. And the new team would be less willing to give Garrett a market-level deal on the way through the door.
Of course, if Garrett wants a shot at a Super Bowl badly enough, maybe he’ll take less to make it happen. And if the Browns want to get rid of the Watson obligation badly enough, maybe they’ll decide that it’s worth losing the remainder of Garrett’s prime years.
The cap consequences are manageable. The deal is doable. In the next few weeks, we’ll find out whether it’s done.
In the second hour of Friday’s PFT Live, Michael Holley and I talked through the possibility of the Browns trading defensive end Myles Garrett with the requirement that Garrett’s new team also absorb quarterback Deshaun Watson’s contract.
Never mind the fact that the move would free the Browns from $92 million in cash and cap obligations. The armchair salary-cap experts are claiming that the trade itself would be impractical.
For starters, everything about the Watson contract is impractical. He’s currently on the books for a $72.935 million cap charge in 2025. Beyond 2025, there’s another $99.835 million in cap charges that still must be absorbed, thanks to the massive mistake of a trade they made three years ago.
So what would a trade do? Before June 1, the Browns would take a dead-money charge in 2025 of $80.77 million for trading Watson. And for trading Garrett before June 1 (and before March 14), the cap charge for 2025 would be $32.95 million.
That said, if the Browns and Garrett’s new team would agree to delay the Watson portion of the trade until after June 1 (and if the new team could be trusted to honor the move at that time), the Watson cap charge would plummet to $26.935 million in 2025, with the remaining $53.835 million hitting the cap in 2026.
Taking it a step farther, if the Garrett trade is delayed until after June 1 (and if Garrett agrees to postpone the due date of his $18.541 million option bonus until, say, June 5), his cap charge for 2025 would fall to $3.63 million. The remaining $29.32 million landing in 2026.
A post-June 1 trade of both would drop the pre-June 1 cap charge from $113.72 million to $30.565 million.
So there are ways to manage the cap consequences. For the Browns, the question becomes whether it’s better to feel a tighter cap pinch over the next two years in order to avoid paying another $92 million to Watson (with every dollar hitting the cap, at some point). Throw in the fact that the Browns also would avoid owing $19.796 million to Garrett in 2025, and the total cash and cap savings would be $111.796 million, eventually.
Either way, the Browns have a cap mess fueled by the Watson deal. The mess lingers a lot longer — and costs $92 million more — if they don’t devise a way to unload the last two years of the deal.
If someone else wants Garrett badly enough to shoulder that burden, the problem wouldn’t be fully solved. But it would be minimized.
Defensive end Myles Garrett wants out of Cleveland. And he has yet to relent on his trade demand.
While Browns owner Jimmy Haslam might decide to dig in his heels and refuse to give Garrett what he wants, there’s a way to eliminate a pair of massive headaches with one pill.
The message would go like this: “If you want Myles Garrett, you have to take Deshaun Watson.”
It would amount to an extra $92 million commitment, with the new team getting Garrett and owing Watson the balance of his five-year, $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract.
The new team wouldn’t put Watson on the field. He’s already highly unlikely to play in 2025, given that he had surgery last month on his re-torn Achilles tendon.
It would be a twist to the Brock Osweiler deal the Browns did seven years ago, when they absorbed $16 million in guaranteed salary and received a second-round pick.
If, of course, a new team takes Watson as part of a Garrett trade, the Deshaun Tax would reduce the draft-pick compensation and/or the new team’s willingness to give Garrett a market-value contract. But if the Browns could engineer the same kind of competition that the Texans finagled three years ago — with four teams (Browns, Panthers, Falcons, Saints) pre-approved to negotiate with Watson — the Browns could include Watson’s albatross contract in the minimal asking price for permission to talk to Garrett.
Would a contender take Watson to get Garrett? The three-pronged negotiations could include an effort to get the Browns to eat some of the $92 million. That would impact the draft picks and the Garrett contract. But if step one focuses solely on the Watson contract and the draft picks given to Cleveland, it would be for the finalists to then make their best financial case to Garrett.
Not many true contenders could pull it off. The Commanders have a massive amount of cap space for 2025. The Chargers do, too. The Vikings and Lions could also make it work without major pain. (The Vikings could justify dumping that kind of cash into a quarterback who won’t play by pointing to J.J. McCarthy’s slotted rookie deal, which averages less than $5.5 million per year.)
In the end, a team that’s currently on the Super Bowl porch would have to believe Garrett is the difference between knocking on the door and kicking it in. And that team would have to be willing and able to explain away the inheritance of the thoroughly unpopular Watson as a business proposition. Possibly, the winner of the Garrett/Watson package would have to cut Watson as soon as the ink dries on the trade paperwork.
And, yes, Watson has a no-trade clause. But if he still gets his money and if it gets him out of Cleveland and ultimately to free agency in 2026, he’d surely consider it.
Regardless, this might be the kind of outside-the-box approach needed to pry Garrett away from the Browns. If, of course, the Browns are willing both to move on from Garrett and to finally admit to themselves and everyone else that the 2022 trade for Watson was and is the worst trade-and-sign of the salary-cap era, and possibly the single worst transaction in NFL history.
The Browns announced a number of changes to head coach Kevin Stefanski’s staff on Friday.
The announcements included confirmation that Bill Musgrave will take on the quarterbacks coach role in 2025. He spent the last two years as a senior offensive assistant in Cleveland and will be a chief assistant under new offensive coordinator Tommy Rees.
Rees’s former spot will be filled by new tight ends coach Christian Jones, who joins the team after working for the Giants.
The Browns have also hired assistant offensive line coach Sanders Davis, assistant special teams coach Kyle Hoke, assistant defensive line coach Adam Morris, and assistant offensive line coach Ben Wilkerson. Stephen Bravo-Brown will be the assistant wide receivers coach after working as a special teams assistant the last three years and Nick Charlton will go from offensive assistant/run game specialist to pass game specialist.