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5 Most Overpaid Browns Heading into the 2023 Season

These five Browns players are putting more than their fair share of stress on the team's salary cap situation.

By Jason Schandl

Jedrick Wills Jr. lands on the list of most overpaid players on the Cleveland Browns roster.
Jedrick Wills Jr. lands on the list of most overpaid players on the Cleveland Browns roster. / Lon Horwedel-USA TODAY Sports
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2. Denzel Ward

Just to beat you to the punch before you click on my author profile to write me a scathing email, I'm not saying Denzel Ward isn't great. I'm not saying he's not a crucial part of this defense.

But Ward is now the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history. Obviously deals scale with salary caps so there's no need to be upset that he has a bigger contract than Deion Sanders did, but I'm also not sold on him deserving to the be the highest-paid player at the position today.

Ward has largely lived up to the hype he got as a top-five draft pick in 2018, but he's not exceeded it. He's made two Pro Bowls in five years, never being named even a second-team All-Pro.

Awards aren't the be-all and end-all of course, and the Browns tend to be underrated, but it's really hard to make a claim to be the best at your position with zero All-Pro honors. The highest overall grade he's earned in a season from Pro Football Focus is also just 79.8. Again, I'm not suggesting you take PFF's analysis without question, but it's certainly a factor to consider.

Would it have been better to let Ward walk than to overpay him? That's a tough one to say, and probably warrants an entire article of its own. But I am confident in saying that his deal was, in fact, an overpay.

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