Steelers Have Cap Room, Can Create More

Good morning,

With a projected salary cap for each team at $155 million and change, the Steelers are under it at this point in the year for the first time in awhile.

According to Over The Cap, they are about $6 million under (for the top 51 salaries, which are all that count in the offseason) and that does not include from what I can see any carryover from 2015, and they had some.

That may not seem like much with some of the contracts they need to do or try to do. There are free agents such as Kelvin Beachum, Ramon Foster, William Gay, Steve McLendon and some others they may try. There also are extensions such as Le’Veon Bell, David DeCastro, Jarvis Jones, Markus Wheaton and perhaps more they may want to extend as they enter their final season.

So, let’s take a look:

First, they can wipe out $6.8 million of cap space by releasing Cortez Allen ($4.4 million salary) with a June designation and releasing/trading Shaun Suisham ($2.4 million).   Understand that as one player is removed from the top 51 salaries, another must replace him, so barring expensive free agent signings or new contracts, that would be a $450,000 first-year minimum player. So in the example above, the Steelers would save $5.9 million by removing Allen and Suisham and not their $6.8 million in salaries.

 While they would not have that extra cap space from Cortez Allen until June, that can be used to go toward extensions, such as one they likely plan to give Bell. 

Nevertheless, we just doubled the Steelers salary cap space to about $12 million.

Then there is the 2016 cap of $8 million in the books right now for DeCastro. That will be reduced when the Steelers sign him to a multiple-year contract. By how much is a guess because it will depend on how much they want him to count this year. But if he receives a new five-year contract with a, say, $12 million signing bonus, that would count $2.4 million annually to be pro-rated against the cap. Then add salaries and roster bonuses. Either way, his cap for this year easily can be reduced by $2 million, maybe even $3 million.

That brings their cap space to at least $14 million. And that ends the easy part of this work sheet. The rest is all business. Do they ask Lawrence Timmons to take a reduction from his $8.75 million salary for 2016? Do they sign any of their free agents? Extend Bell or others? Sign other teams’ free agents? Give Antonio Brown another $2 million advance on his 2017 salary as they did his 2016 salary last year?

All that will eat into that cap room.

One area in which they do not have as much room to work to create cap room as they have in the past is by redoing vets’ contracts as they have done so often this time of year. They could still do that with Ben Roethlisberger, who has a $17.75 million salary in 2016 and a cap number of nearly $24 million. Mike Mitchell, who has a $5 million salary in 2016 and is signed through 2018, also could be a possibility for that kind of restructure that does not cost the player a penny but creates cap space for this year (and pushes more into the future).

So there is room to work for the Steelers, but they will have to make even more if they want to go head-first into signing any big-time free agents.

Some more Stuff:

--- For all the complaining some Steelers fans do about the state of their team and what they need to do this offseason to be contenders, others see them as one of the best in the NFL.

Indeed, most odds have them as the co-favorites along with New England to win the AFC next season.

In this example, the Steelers, Patriots, Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks are all 10-1 to win the Super Bowl next season. Others I have seen have the Steelers, Pats and Seahawks tied at 8-1. Cincinnati is next in the AFC at 18-1.

Now, if the Steelers can only shore up that secondary!

--- Yesterday here I gave Cam Newton the benefit of the doubt for hesitating to go after his late fumble in the Super Bowl. Then later in the day, he acknowledged he did not go after it because he feared injury so I take all that back.