The Pittsburgh Steelers spent Wednesday tending to their own house as three of their own unrestricted free agents were officially re-signed. Even though we don’t have the official numbers of the contracts signed by long snapper Greg Warren, safety Will Allen and center/guard Cody Wallace, we do have a pretty good idea where the team sits from a salary cap standpoint entering day three of free agency.
Being as Warren and Allen more than likely signed one-year qualifying contracts for the veteran minimum, they both couldn’t have used up more than $215,000 of cap space each following displacement. In addition, I will be surprised if Wallace’s first-year cap hit is more than $1,063,333, so if that is indeed the max, he only used another $643,333 of cap space after displacement in the top 51.
When the above estimates are combined with the official contract numbers of newly signed safety Mike Mitchell, that should leave the Steelers with nearly $5 million of useable cap space entering Thursday.
Remember, the Steelers will get another $8 million in cap space come June 1 when the release of linebacker LaMarr Woodley becomes official and that’s more than enough room to accommodate the 2014 draft class. In addition, The Steelers should be able to clear at least another $3.5 million of cap space whenever they get a long-term contract worked out with linebacker Jason Worilds.
$5 million might not seem like a lot of room to work with right now, but when you consider that Mitchell’s five-year, $25 million contract resulted in a first year cap charge of $2.2 million, the Steelers should have enough room for another signing equal to that.
Now that you know the current cap situation, give me the name of one available free agent currently still on the market as of Thursday morning that you think the Steelers should sign.
