As free agency officially begins at midnight tonight, the Steelers will likely be on the sidelines watching all of the action. A salary cap report earlier in the day by Adam Schefter said the Steelers were only $7,400,000.00 under the $127,000,000.00 salary cap. My Steelers salary cap estimation has them at $9,476,280.00 under the cap after the release of Simmons and Humpal and the tendering of the other five players. This leaves me off by $2,076,280.00 which I am sure is an error on my part by missing some dead money along with being off a bit on a few contracts.
Before the Steelers go after any free agents they need to house clean themselves by extending James Harrison and signing Max Starks to a new contract. Also they may consider in redoing a few more contracts as well to reduce the cap number. Right now, Starks and Ben Roethlisberger account for 22 million dollars of the 2009 salary cap. If you were planning on staying up tonight, don\’t do it on the Steelers behalf as I expect it to be very quiet on the Steelers news wire.
Updated 9:17 PM Central:
I found 2.4 million in dead money left over from center Sean Mahan. That puts the Steelers at $119,923,720.00 or $7,076,280 under the salary cap. I am sure there are a few more errors on my part, so realistically the Steelers are around only 5-6 million under the cap at this time.
