The Wednesday night news dump that the Browns and Jaguars had swapped a pair of starting cornerbacks caused considerable head-scratching for fans of both teams.
For Cleveland, it makes plenty of sense. They swapped the balance of Greg Newsome’s $13.377 million fifth-year option for Tyson Campbell, who is under contract through 2027. With much of the money already paid by Jacksonville.
The Browns will owe Campbell $1.08 million for the rest of the 2025 season, with three year and $45.6 million after that. It’s an average of $15.2 million per year, at a time when the market has reached $30 million in new money annually.
So what would Newsome want on a new deal? Assuming that the Browns had an inkling as to his coming demands — and given that the franchise tag for next year at the cornerback position will be well over $20 million — the Browns get certainty and affordability.
Undoubtedly, there’s a formula somewhere in the Cleveland front office that, when the numbers were run, pointed to doing the deal. Given the franchise’s decade-long obsession with analytics (which has resulted in the consumption of significant analgesics), every decision presumably flows from an effort to turn a subjective sport into an objective calculation.
Of course, there’s one important caveat to the scientific exercise that resulted in swapping out Newsome for Campbell. Campbell knows how much the Browns owe him through 2027. If he plays well, he’ll want a revised deal, sooner or later.
The move makes less sense for the Jaguars, financially. They’ll take a cap charge of $22.72 million in 2026 for Campbell. And they stand in the same contractual shoes that the Browns were in with Newsome, with the tag as the only alternative to letting him hit the open market in March (unless they sign him to a new deal).
Still, the new regime in Jacksonville undoubtedly decided that, for whatever reason, Newsome will be a better fit than Campbell was. And the Jaguars, at 4-1, are looking to make a strong defense even stronger as they continue to establish themselves as a contender in a currently wide-open AFC.
