Details of how it affects the Cleveland Browns quarterback's $230 million contract

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There has been a lot of attention on the suspension portion of the punishment handed down to the Cleveland Browns, but the $5 million fine that goes with the negotiated 11 game suspension is noteworthy.

The first player to be fined under the NFL's personal conduct policy is believed to be the one who was accused of sexual harassment. The league determined a suspension without pay was adequate. A player who was suspended for nine games would lose $9 million.

There were two reasons why the NFL decided to factor a fine into the final discipline forWatson.

Sources say there were more than a few people at the league office who thought he should face some sort of retroactive financial consequence for earning his entire $10.5 million salary from the Houston Texans.

The financial impact of a suspension is lessened by the contract structure of the ClevelandBrowns. The structure, which has been widely reported and debated, was also impacted by the contract extension that the Texans signed in the summer of 2020 for quarterback Deshaun. After accounting for the $5 million fine, the total earnings between the summer of 2020 and March 31st of next year will be at least 78.61 million.

The current deal is the starting point. The minimum salary for a player with between four and six years of service time is $1.035 million, which is the minimum salary for a player with a fully guaranteed, five-year contract. The bye week in Week 9 of the season will result in the suspension being reduced from 11 to 10 games. The players are paid weekly during the regular season.

The structuring of the contract angered a lot of people who believed they were doing the wrong thing.

• A lot of NFL contracts are structured like this, with a large signing bonus the team can spread out over the life of the deal for salary cap purposes and a low first year salary. The Miami Dolphins signed Tyreek Hill to a $25.5 million signing bonus and a minimum $1.035 million salary in 2022. A.J. Brown has a deal with the Philadelphia Eagles.

• The structure of the contract was being done by the Browns in a way that was more beneficial to them than it was to the other team. Even after restructuring the deals of Amari Cooper and Case Keenum to save cap room, they still had the third-lowest amount of cap space in the league. If it hadn't structured the deal this way, Cleveland wouldn't have been able to operate the rest of its summer.

• If he had been suspended for a full season, his contract would have tolled and the season would have been cut in half, which would have made the deal even more beneficial to the team.

That's right, if you want to criticize the Browns for guaranteeing the whole contract as a way of doing so, that's fine. The first-year contract structure was not a bad way to save money. It was typical of the business of the National Football League.

The contract structure bothered a lot of people, and the league believed a fine on top of the suspension was necessary. The discipline will cost more than $5 million.

Is that something that means to him? The nature of the contract extension that was signed with Houston in 2020 is not a good deal.

When he signed his extension with the Texans in 2020, he received a signing bonus of $27 million and a 2020 salary of about $1 million. He made more than $30 million that season. Even though he didn't play, he still made $10.5 million in salary. Less than two months before the first civil lawsuit was filed against him, he told the Texans he didn't want to be there anymore. He made all of his money because the Texans were unable to trade him due to the civil suits and criminal investigation.

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Cleveland ripped up the rest of his contract and gave him a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal. The signing bonus is paid in three parts, the first of which was due by July 31. There is another fifteen million dollars due by the end of the year. The final amount of money is due by March 31,23.

Since signing his deal with Houston in the summer of 2020, he has made over 50 million dollars, with another 29 million in bonus money coming in the next eight months on top of the $345,000 he'll earn in salary over the final six weeks of the season.

Thursday's $5 million fine adds up to $83. 81 million. He will have played a total of 22 games over the course of the next two years if he plays the last six games of the season for the Browns.

There will be $46 million in guaranteed salary each year for the next ten years.

It's clear that the NFL felt it had to do something to make up for the lost income when a suspension wasn't going to happen on its own.