Former Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle Steve McLendon recently signed a three-year contract with the New York Jets that can reportedly be worth up to $12 million and as of Wednesday, we now know a few more details related to that deal.
According to Brian Costello of the New York Post, McLendon will receive a fully-guaranteed base salary in 2016 of $1.75 million as part of his new contract in addition receiving a $2.25 million signing bonus. If those figures are indeed correct, McLendon received $4 million guaranteed as part of his new three-year contract and his cap charge in 2016 will be $2.5 million.
While we still don’t know what the final two years of McLendon’s contract looks like, the fact that it has the possibility of totaling out at $12 million indicates that he might have some sort of roster bonuses or incentives included in the final two years of his deal.
Back in January, I speculated McLendon’s free agent market value this offseason to be $3.25 million a year and proposed that the Steelers should offer him a three-year contract worth $9.75 million that would include a $2.25 signing bonus. While I hit the signing bonus right on the head, the Jets valued him at a possible $4 million per year player.
We’ll likely never know what the Steelers offered McLendon, if indeed an offer was made at all, but it’s pretty obvious that whatever offer they may have given him wasn’t close to the one he received from the Jets. McLendon also stands to receive a lot more playing time with the Jets in 2016 as the Steelers former undrafted free agent only played 377 regular season snaps in Pittsburgh last year as he was relegated to mostly playing in the team’s base defense and goal-line packages.
