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Estimate: Browns still have $68.80 million in available cap space (breakdown)

Updated numbers after all of the Browns’ moves in free agency so far indicate they can still add a few more players.

NFL: Combine Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

After the Cleveland Browns had made a bunch of trades last Friday and Saturday, we estimated they had $83.55 million in available cap space. That number changes now due to the following additions and subtractions:

  • Signing RT Chris Hubbard, OT Donald Stephenson, RB Carlos Hyde, TE Darren Fells, CB Terrance Mitchell, and CB T.J. Carrie
  • The retirement of LT Joe Thomas

In the table below, we list the Top 51 cap hits, since only the highest 51 cap hits are included in the available cap space calculation at this time of the year. The full calculations of how much cap space we have left are all the way at the bottom, below the table.

Browns’ Top 51 Cap Hits

Player 2018 Cap Hit
Player 2018 Cap Hit
Tyrod Taylor $16,000,000
Jarvis Landry $15,982,000
Kevin Zeitler $12,400,000
Jamie Collins $12,150,000
Myles Garrett $6,911,876
J.C. Tretter $6,750,000
Christian Kirksey $6,200,000
Joel Bitonio $6,000,000
Carlos Hyde $6,000,000
Chris Hubbard $5,800,000
T.J. Carrie $5,300,000
Jamar Taylor $5,275,000
Darren Fells $3,600,000
Terrance Mitchell* $3,600,000
Jason McCourty $3,546,868
Corey Coleman $3,178,632
Chris Smith $2,666,666
Britton Colquitt $2,550,000
Donald Stephenson $2,500,000
Jabrill Peppers $2,350,508
David Njoku $2,164,851
Duke Johnson $2,084,523
Jamie Meder $1,907,000
Emmanuel Ogbah $1,802,629
Damarious Randall $1,514,418
Nate Orchard $1,421,097
Carl Nassib $995,438
Cody Kessler $924,295
Larry Ogunjobi $887,989
Shon Coleman $874,884
Josh Gordon $790,000
Joe Schobert $788,489
Ricardo Louis $771,962
Derrick Kindred $754,839
Randall Telfer $734,384
Sammie Coates $730,000
Seth DeValve $725,848
Howard Wilson $705,786
Derron Smith $705,000
Max Bullough $705,000
Charley Hughlett $705,000
Spencer Drango $681,913
Dominique Alexander $635,834
Denzel Rice $630,000
Briean Boddy-Calhoun $630,000
Corey White $630,000
Michael Jordan $630,000
Kevin Hogan $630,000
Jeremy Cash $630,000
Rashard Higgins $630,000
Dan Vitale $630,000
Austin Reiter $630,000
Total $158,442,729

A few notes:

  • For now, all of the numbers are pulled from Spotrac, Over the Cap, and Twitter. We will be doing full, year-by-year contracts of each new player’s contract over the next few days. This will help tell us how many of the deals actually look like one-year “prove it” type of contracts.
  • $13.5 million of Joe Thomas’ cap hit comes off. He’ll still carry about $750,000 in dead money I believe.
  • The only player who didn’t have a year one cap hit reported yet was CB Terrance Mitchell. Because the years were the same, I made it equal to TE Darren Fells’ cap hit as an approximation.
  • This also includes smaller amounts of tendered players: DT Jamie Meder as a RFA, and WR Josh Gordon, C Austin Reiter, FB Danny Vitale, and QB Kevin Hogan as ERFA.
  • The team could be releasing players pretty soon, which will update the cap numbers and dead money.

Here are the updated cap figures in a more formalized manner.

CONFIRMED BY NFLPA (WITH ESTIMATED CREDIT)

NFL 2018 Salary Cap (Projected): $177.2 million
Browns’ Rollover from 2017: $58.91 million
Browns’ 2018 Adjusted Salary Cap: $177.2 million + $58.91 million = $236.11 million
Adjustments / Credits from 2017: $5.15 million + $236.11 million = $241.26 million

ESTIMATED BY OVER THE CAP (WITH DBN ADJUSTMENTS)

Browns’ Top 51 Cap Total: $158.44 million
Browns’ Dead Money for 2018: $14.02 million
Browns’ Total Cap Spent for 2018: $158.44 million + $14.02 million = $172.46 million

FINAL SALARY CAP SPACE

When you subtract the two subtotals above ($241.26 million - $172.46 million), you can see how the “$68.80 million in cap space” figure was derived.