Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers have left for Denver for their season opener, and no new contract for wide receiver Mike Wallace was reported to be on board, we can now take a firmer look at where the team sits from a salary cap standpoint headed into week 1 of the season.
PFT reports on Saturday that the Steelers have $1.6 million in cap space. That closely resembles my updated numbers that I track that is based off a cap number of personnel team cap number of $121,195,000. That number is derived from the $120.6 million cap number plus the $500,000 plus that was rolled over from last season of unused cap space. I basically have the team at $1.5 million in cap space.
One thing to keep in mind here is that I do not believe that the PFT numbers include the three, $500,000 veteran cap credits that General Manager Kevin Colbert told the media that he would use this year. When you add that $1.5 million to my numbers and the numbers that PFT has for the Steelers, you come up with available cap space of right around $3 million, which sounds about right on heading into the season.
Another thing to keep in mind is that tight end Weslye Saunders is suspended for the first four weeks, so that is just over $109,400 in cap space saved there that is not reflected in my numbers. Also I do not have the practice squad total amount for the season of over $775,000 in my numbers either.
