# From nepotism to staggeringly bad contracts: the NFL’s most hopeless franchises

Five years ago, we looked at the teams vying for the championship belt of incompetence. If a lesson came from the exercise – the Chargers, Commanders and Texans made the list – it’s that a young franchise quarterback can transform a team’s fortunes pretty quickly. The other lesson is that Woody Johnson is a consistently awful owner. Anyway, here’s our latest list of woe.

## Cleveland Browns

A single decision can detonate a franchise. At the start of the decade, the Browns were fun upstarts. They had hit on a batch of top draft picks. They made the playoffs. With Baker Mayfield, they finally had a serviceable starting quarterback. It felt like the longtime AFC North doormats were a move or two away from catching up with the conference’s big boys – and they were swimming in the salary cap space needed to make those moves happen. And then they tethered their future to Deshaun Watson, sending three first-round picks to Houston for the quarterback and signing him to a fully-guaranteed, five-year, $230m contract.

Three years on, the trade has been an abject disaster. Forget the worst trade in NFL history, it’s up there with the worst deals in any sport. Cleveland mortgaging their franchise for Watson makes the Dallas Mavericks trading away Luka Dončić or the Boston Red Sox letting Babe Ruth walk look like savvy business. Watson is a shadow of the player he was before he was suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct. Last season, he was the worst starter in the NFL by a comfortable distance before he tore his Achilles late in the year. And all that’s before we get to the ethical considerations of giving someone with Watson’s history a huge deal.

In the Hall of Fame of hopelessness, we should open a new wing for those Cleveland fans who have been scouring through the fine print of Watson’s deal to see if the Browns can wriggle their way out of paying the final years of his contract.

The Browns have restructured Watson’s deal to give them more financial flexibility on the back end while opening up some cap space for this offseason. The move cleared $35m in cap space for this offseason, but still leaves Cleveland in the bottom 10 in cap space as they look to rejuvenate their roster. Still, for all the cap chicanery, the Browns still have a stack of Watson money on their books. They’ve now paid him over half of the cash due to the quarterback, but they still have over $135m in salary cap money to put on their sheet. That money will likely extend beyond Watson’s time in Cleveland, meaning the team will still pay a premium for a player not on their roster. Manipulating Watson’s contract was a must for the franchise, but at some point the accounting mechanics will come due. For now, the Browns are kicking the can down the road in the hopes of rebuilding the rest of the roster with a sinkhole at quarterback.

That leaves Cleveland entering this offseason with no established quarterback beyond the injured Watson, no cap room, and holes all over their roster. It’s no wonder that Myles Garrett requested a trade. Cleveland’s best hope is that they can move Garrett for a bounty of draft picks, tear the roster down, start again, and build toward the blessed day when Watson’s contract is finally off the books.

## Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers are a good team, but what makes them hopeless is the lack of any sign they will improve: being stuck in football purgatory brings a despondency of its own.

The Steelers are a perennial playoff team who get crushed in January. They are further away today from contending in the AFC than they have been in years. By all accounts, they will let Russell Wilson walk this offseason and return to the veteran quarterback market to find another stopgap. Justin Fields, who Wilson ultimately beat out as the starter last season, will likely be retained to give the team some continuity.

After last season’s playoff defeat, it was clear that Mike Tomlin needed to make more dramatic changes. For as strong as Tomlin has been in the regular season over the past decade, his postseason record has been poor. Tomlin is now 8-11 for his career in playoffs and 0-5 in the last eight years. Worse, the Steelers have looked uncompetitive in all five of those defeats.

The Steelers roster is still filled with question marks. Their defense, the backbone of their recent success, is getting old. How long can they bank on Cameron Heyward, who is about to turn 36, being one of the league’s best defensive linemen? Was TJ Watt’s mild decline at the back end of last season a one-off or a sign that he is on the slide?

Tomlin has not yet made big moves. He retained his staff this offseason and has spoken, again, of “internal growth”. Reports out of Pittsburgh suggest the team is not sold on the middle band of quarterbacks in this year’s draft class – and the team does not seem interested in striking a blockbuster trade to leap to the top of the draft to grab the University of Miami’s Cam Ward, the No 1 quarterback in the class.

That leaves the Steelers in a rut. Under Tomlin, they will never bottom out and grab a top draft pick. The coach is too good. But what is the path to contention? The plan seems to be to run it back with a veteran quarterback and an outdated offense, relying on an aging defense to squeeze out another playoff berth. Tomlin will continue to surpass expectations and guide rickety rosters to the playoffs. But at some point, it becomes taxing on a fanbase to know that you have no shot to compete when it matters most.

## New York Jets

There is one culprit for the Jets’ never-ending malaise: owner Woody Johnson. Remember those couple of years when Woody stepped back from the team and let his brother, Christopher, run the show? Good times. For two years, the Jets looked positively adequate.

Since Woody returned from his ambassadorial role in the UK, though, he has been on a hopeless hot streak. The heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune turned his team over to a 40-year-old crank. Aaron Rodgers was given the keys to the building, handpicking his staff, making key personnel decisions, and setting his own schedule, to the chagrin of then-head coach Robert Saleh.

The result: two lost seasons, endless controversies, and another Johnson-inspired debacle.

The Jets have the longest-running playoff drought in the league. Since 2011, they have finished above .500 only once. Back in 2022, there were solid-looking foundations. The Jets had a talented young core and a front office that looked like it knew what it was doing. They had missed on quarterback Zach Wilson, but had a roster capable of mounting a playoff push. But the two-year dalliance with Rodgers has set the franchise back – and every part of the Rodgers-led clown show had Johnson’s fingerprints on it.

With Dan Snyder out of the league, Johnson has claimed the top spot as the league’s worst owner. Tempestuous. Impatient. Egotistical. Nepotistic. Intrusive. Controlling. Johnson has it all.

“It’s the most dysfunctional place imaginable,” an anonymous player told the Athletic last season about the Jets. He was not alone. Johnson was the only owner to receive an F from players in the Players’ Association’s annual survey. He finished last in the survey in his willingness to invest in facilities, last in contributing to a positive team culture, and second to last in being committed to building a competitive team. Almost the triple crown! Maybe next year, Woody.

Culture is a nebulous term. But when the teenage son of an owner is handing out game balls rather than a player or head coach, whatever the culture is supposed to be is broken. You can add to that Johnson and his family’s penchant for criticizing players in the locker room, including reportedly telling quarterback Mike White: “you fucking suck.” Or you can add Johnson reportedly scuppering a trade last offseason because his 15-year-old told him the player had a low Madden rating, which sounds like a rejected plot from a crappy Netflix show.

Still, hope springs eternal in New York. The Jets have moved on from Rodgers and his buddies and are at the start of another cycle. Aaron Glenn, the new head coach, is an exciting hire. Maybe the Jets will eventually hit on a franchise quarterback who can trigger a quick turnaround. But they’ve taken plenty of shots on smart coaches and talented quarterbacks before. Johnson has a 20-year legacy of losing. Until he sells the team, the Jets are unlikely to build a stable team, let alone a contender.

## New York Giants

The Jets’ roommates have question marks of their own. The owner, general manager, head coach, and quarterback set the trajectory of a franchise. Three of those positions are up in the air.

Owner John Mara retained GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll after a disappointing 2024, one that brought viral attention after they were featured on Hard Knocks. Credit to Mara; other owners would not have readily accepted that humiliation.

Mara keeping the two main pieces in place made sense. Schoen crushed last year’s draft, even if some of his free-agency decisions (betting on Daniel Jones; letting Saquon Barkley walk) have gone awry. Daboll has proved he can develop a young quarterback and can squeeze solid performances out of an incomplete offense. That should be a solid foundation, allowing the Giants to tweak this offseason and build methodically rather than chase high-priced names. But Mara’s decision to keep his two chief decision-makers came with a public credo: find a quarterback.

Every staff feels offseason pressure, but Schoen and Daboll are working under a particularly thick cloud. If they whiff on their quarterback, they could be out of their jobs before November. And it’s slim pickings out there. Do they want to commit to a multi-year contract for Sam Darnold or spend a fortune in future assets to move up to the top spot in the draft to select Ward? Even if they’re unsold on either, they may have to shut their eyes, sign the contract, and hope for the best.

The Giants’ first choice was to trade for Matthew Stafford but he ultimately decided to return to the Rams. Beyond pulling off a deal for Darnold or moving up the draft for Ward, they’re left looking in the bargain bin.

Rodgers is the fallback plan. If not Rodgers, Schoen and Daboll’s jobs may rest on the shoulders of Wilson, Jameis Winston, or a rookie quarterback. The best free agent on the market after Darnold, Rodgers (if you’re Rodgers-inclined) and Wilson is … Daniel Jones. Oops.

Mara showed admirable patience by retaining his coach and general manager. But they’re now working from a point of desperation. If they invest heavily in a quarterback this offseason solely to protect their jobs, it could set the franchise back years.
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