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The Cleveland Browns need to solve several issues with their roster.

Unfortunately, they won’t have a lot of flexibility to do so.

The team has backed itself into a corner with the Deshaun Watson trade, and not even another big spike in the salary cap will be enough for them to do everything they need with the money they’ll have available.

As shown by Zac Jackson of The Athletic, letting go of Amari Cooper and Za’Darius Smith will also take a big toll on their chances of putting together a competitive roster:

“After a record jump to $255 million for 2024, the salary cap is expected to be around $270 million next year. The Browns have Watson set to account for about 25 percent of that, and they already have around $40 million in dead money on the contracts of Amari Cooper and Za’Darius Smith,” Jackson said.

Looking back, the Browns got absolutely nothing positive from trading for Watson.

He was either suspended, hurt, or played poorly, and it devoid them of young players.

All the valuable draft picks they had to give up to acquire him hampered their roster-building, as they couldn’t acquire and develop young players to replace the aging ones.

The team will likely have to fill their roster with unproven players, which rarely translates into success.

Of course, we’ve seen teams like the Kansas City Chiefs win a Super Bowl with rookie starters and plenty of new faces on the roster, but that’s most likely an outlier.

The worst part is that the Browns won’t be able to trade Watson.

Not many teams would want anything to do with that kind of contract.

Releasing him would solve one problem, but they would still be responsible for a massive dead cap hit.