Do The Cleveland Browns Need A Complete Tear Down?

Browns vice president of football operations Andrew Berry spoke about whether or not the franchise will have to go through a full rebuild to return to being a playoff team.

Andrew Berry holds his bye week press conference at the team facility in Berea, OH / Spencer German

To tear it all down, or not to tear it all down. That is the question the Cleveland Browns – and more specifically vice president of football operations and general manager Andrew Berry – face at the end of the 2024 season.

As things stand right now, the Browns are 2-7, with any hopes of making a return trip to the postseason essentially dead in the water. The bye week, which just so happened to coincide with the trade deadline, serves as a perfect time for reflection in terms of the direction this team is headed.

While Berry beat around the bush on subjects ranging from Deshaun Watson's future, to the trade deadline, to upcoming roster construction, he did offer a pretty telling answer on whether or not he believes the Browns will have to turn back the clock to 2016 and start rebuilding the roster from scratch.

"I think one of the beauties of the NFL is it's not like baseball, it's not like basketball where, at times you may need these half decade long pivots or rebuilds," Berry said. "I think you see it every year with teams, just the margins are so thin and then honestly with just the way that our sport works with player procurement, it's not like we're drafting a16-year-old kid who's got to play eight years in the minors before he comes and produces or something along those lines. So I think generally you don't necessarily have to see those pivots in our sport."

That sure doesn't sound like a guy who is ready to flip Myles Garrett for picks and start from scratch. Berry actually made it pretty clear that trading Garrett during Tuesday's deadline was never even something they considered.

Despite how this season has gone, players like Garrett headline a roster that is still ready to compete at a high level. To Berry's point, in the NFL it doesn't require teams to blow up a roster the way former GM Sashi Brown did in 2016 to get your team heading in the right direction. Identifying and executing the right tweaks to a roster can turn even the worst team in the league from a pumpkin into the bell of the ball.

Often times that right move is landing the right quarterback, in the vein of the NFC East leading Washington Commanders who are the darlings of the NFL after hitting on rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels.

Andrew Berry doesn't rule out Deshaun Watson as the #Browns future QB https://t.co/4A8u5VwDBg

— 𝚂𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚛 𝙶𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@Spencito_) November 6, 2024

The biggest difference there, of course, is that Washington's cap situation is much, much different than the Browns currently is. In fact no team is really facing the type of salary cap restrictions the Browns are likely to have this offseason with Deshaun Watson's fully-guaranteed contract still looming over the organization like a black cloud.

Watson is still owed over $92 million over the next two seasons. His cap charges though based on money Berry kicked down the road in the form of a his signing bonus and restructures is much larger than that. We're talking upwards of $172 million in dead cap charges if Watson were to just be released straight up.

There may end up being no other way around it than having him on the roster, but not present – similar to his final year in Houston. Cleveland would essentially then spend the year with a 52-man roster rather than a 53-man roster. Or perhaps he is around but viewed as a backup quarterback option.

Either way the finances of that albatross of a contract are undeniable and going to make life very difficult for Berry. So too will other large contracts for aging players. Even still, it doesn't mean the Browns have to take dynamite sticks to the roster.

Perhaps they'll use their first, first round pick in three years to draft a young, cheap quarterback (a rookie QB is about the only one they can afford right now). That would certainly come with a new sense of hope for fans to latch onto. There are obvious needs to address on the offensive line as well. Another receiver is probably a top priority.

It's not an ideal place to be, by any means. And if Berry is still here leading that charge (that may be a big if right now) his roster building, cap manipulation and talent evaluation will be tested like never before. If done correctly though, there's no reason to think the Browns can't be back in the playoff conversation a year from now.