We heard at the end of June that the Browns were “working on” an extension for cornerback Denzel Ward, and it sounds like that has become the top item on the team’s agenda. According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com (via Twitter), Cleveland and Ward are actively discussing a new deal now that RB Nick Chubb has put pen to paper on an extension of his own.
Ward, a 2018 first-round choice, saw his fifth-year option for 2022 exercised earlier this year, so player and team do have some time to hash things out. Of course, the Browns have Ward’s draftmate, quarterback Baker Mayfield, looking for a new contract as well, and it sounds as if Cleveland is at least trying to get everything else off its plate before digging in on the inherently more complex QB negotiations.
Indeed, Fowler adds that talks with Mayfield have not yet heated up. As soon as Josh Allen signed his mega-deal with the Bills, the NFL world turned its attention to Mayfield and the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, but Cleveland GM Andrew Berry downplayed the impact that Allen’s contract would have on Mayfield’s situation.
“I think for really any player or any positional market, we’re always aware of the deals that have been done over the past couple years and certainly any deals that come up over the next couple weeks because we realize that impacts the market to some degree,” Berry said (via Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz of the Akron Beacon Journal). “But at the same time with any player that we’re considering extending, we really deal with it on a case-by-case and individual level. We really operate within the parameters that we think make sense for our organization and our team, and that’s what we’ll continue to do really across positions.”
That’s generally what one would expect a GM to say, but we also heard back in June that, if Allen and Jackson landed contracts paying them north of $40MM per year — and now that Allen is sitting at a $43MM AAV, Jackson will certainly get something in that neighborhood — Mayfield would not “settle” for a yearly rate of $35MM (his current market value per Spotrac). So once the Browns open Mayfield negotiations in earnest, it will be interesting to see how much of a gap there is between the two sides.
Ward, meanwhile, currently has a market value of $18.5MM per year, which would position him near the top of the league’s CBs. Despite being forced into more zone coverage than he probably would have liked in 2020, Ward finished as Pro Football Focus’ 23rd-best corner out of 121 qualifiers. Though he has missed at least three games due to injury in each of his first three professional seasons, his performance between the lines has been everything the Browns could have hoped for. He earned Pro Bowl honors in his rookie season, and he has tallied 40 passes defensed and seven interceptions — including one pick-six — in his young career.
Given the value of top-flight boundary corners, expect Berry to make a strong push to get a deal finalized. It’s presently unclear where things stand with guard Wyatt Teller, yet another extension candidate.
No way Baker justifies a $40+mil AAV. Especially not on the Browns. They’re one of the most run first offenses in the league. Baker has been pretty good, but not top of the market good
After waiting 18 years to make the playoffs the Browns FO is not going to try lowballing it’s star players because the fan backlash would be enormous.
Should be a pretty clear indication the star players are Chubb and Ward over Baker.
They have a core group that they will need to keep intact. Fans in Cleveland are not willing to wait another 18 years for playoff success.
And Baker’s going to have a much longer lifespan (in all likelihood) in terms of his football career. It doesn’t have nearly as much to do with stardom when the three are all towards the top of their respective position groups.
Granted the Browns ranked #29 for percent pass plays last year but that was still 52% passing so discounting Mayfield’s ability to impact the offense would be foolish.
what’s the rush to extend QBs so early? none of them ever agree to team-friendly deals anyway.
Browns are currently 6th in cap space so they aren’t as desperate to secure team friendly deals as some other teams may be.
Yeah, Cleveland planned for this. One upside of having a million picks is that, well, you have a million picks. Obviously. The other obvious fact is that, if you’ve picked correctly, you’ll need to pay out a lot more money to a lot more players in four years. The QB market got wrecked by the Mahomesdeal and the WR market did by the Hopkins deal, neither of which Cleveland could adequately prepare for given how much higher than usual those two skewed their respective position salaries, but the team has done a pretty good job setting aside cap space to retain their drafted stars.