Earlier in the offseason the Cleveland Browns did Post June 1st cuts to Dalvin Tomlinson and Juan Thornhill. Per league rules, these have to be done when the new league year starts. The news of a Thornhill cut came on the 24th of Feb that he would be released. The team knew early on this was the way the deal was heading coming into the offseason. In comparison the Tomlinson news didn't come until the 10th of March, probably because they would not have made the move if they did not get Collins or someone agreed at the start of the negotiation period.
Here is the Tomlinson deal in full:
We are only focusing on the first two years of payment as he didn't make year three of his deal. He earned $28m but due to the way the Cleveland Browns do their deals they push the numbers into the future. This means there is still $17.151m of salary cap charges to account for from this $28m he was paid.
The option the team has is to do a normal cut where they would have $17.151m of dead cap in 2025, or they do a post June 1st cut where the team carried the origional contract number of $11.542m as if he was still under contract until June 2nd, at which point it drops to $5.042m. The remaining dead cap $12,109m then lands on the following years salary cap.
The reason the Cleveland Browns do their deals like this is so that it allows them to spend so much more money than other teams, roughly $50m a year more than league average. Where the salary cap keeps rising the cost against the cap becomes lower year on year. I went into more details on this in an article today.