Will Browns Make Big Splash When The New League Year Opens Next Week?
A land of opportunity awaits all 32 teams next week when the new league year begins.
NFL free agency represents the first chance for some teams get to start building a championship caliber roster. For others, it's an opportunity to put the finishing touches on a roster that may only be a few pieces away from entering that stratosphere.
In 2024, the Browns fall into the latter of those buckets. With 18 of 22 combined starters between the offense and defense still under contract for next season, Cleveland doesn't need to reinvent the wheel this offseason. That's something general manager Andrew Berry eluded to at the NFL Combine last week.
"If you remember where we were in 2020, we made the playoffs, but we were actually still pretty aggressive in free agency the following year because we had a fair amount of work to do with the defense," Berry said. "I can't say that I think we're necessarily going to have that level of volume with the team currently. But things really do change from week to week."
Berry noted that he and his staff won't treat how the season ended – disastrously to the Texans in a 45-14 Wild Card loss to the Texans – as reason to panic and make drastic changes. It's simply about the current state of the roster, which, coming off of a season where Cleveland ranked No. 1 in defense in a number of different categories and made the postseason despite starting five different QBs – is in a solid spot already.
That won't stop fans from dreaming up their favorite fantasy football player acquisitions. Treating the real NFL as if it's franchise mode in Madden and the salary cap setting is set to off.
With wide receiver being one of the more bandied needs for the Browns just about every top free agent name has been mentioned in connection to Cleveland. Deshaun Watson had Browns fans dreaming of him tossing touchdowns to Tee Higgins after making a pitch to him on his podcast. Once he was franchised tagged by Cincinnati it was all eyes on Mike Evans, who just re-signed with the Buccaneers on a two-year, $52 million deal this week.
Bills wideout Gabe Davis has been a constant conversation as a potential No. 2 wide receiver. Jaguars free agent to be Calvin Ridley's name has come up as well. Maybe the Browns will go out and add a wide receiver in free agency, but those contracts tend to get pricey pretty quickly and with the limited cap space available to them, it's unclear if they'd be willing to dump upwards of $20-plus mission per year in the position this offseason.
The new flavor of the week for Cleveland is DT Christian Wilkins. After going untagged by the Dolphins, Wilkins is now set to officially become an unrestricted free agent next week. Defensive tackle does represented a need for the Browns with a number of their main contributors in the interior defense set to become free agents themselves. That said, just last offseason Cleveland nvested in the defensive tackle spot with the addition of Dalvin Tomlinson on a four-year, $57 million deal.
History shows that Berry has generally been less inclined to hand out mega deals during free agency and more inclined to acquire talent via trade at the start of the new league year. Tomlinson's deal is the largest free agent deal Berry has handed out during his tenure, with Austin Hooper's four-year, $44 million contract coming in second. It's hard to classify many of his other free agent moves over the last four years as "big splashes."
Anyone looking for those would find them in the trades to acquire Amari Cooper and Watson in 2022, or perhaps Za'Darius Smith and Elijah Moore last offseason.
Never say never of course. But given Berry's assessment the Browns roster 2024 may be more about retention and tweaks than landing a big fish.
