Steelers 2016 Salary Cap Update Following Draft Pick Signings

As of Friday the Pittsburgh Steelers are now finished signing all of their 2016 draft class and with that I can provide you a full update on where the team sits salary cap wise ahead of their annual mandatory minicamp.

Currently, the Steelers have 94 players under contract and that includes three who are currently on the Reserve/Injured list (Kevin Anderson, Tyriq McCord, Jay Rome) and one who is on the Reserve/Suspended List (Martavis Bryant).

During the offseason, the league uses the Rule 51 to track all team’s salary cap being as rosters are allowed to be expanded to 90 players. That rule tracks each team’s top 51 salaries, signing bonus proration amounts outside of the top 51 and all dead money. Currently, I have the Steelers Rule of 51 number at $155,680,414.

The Steelers rolled over $3,000,327 in remaining salary cap space from last year but were also debited $641,349 by the league for an adjustment that had to be made from 2015. When those two numbers are factored in it leaves the Steelers with $1,948,564 in available salary cap space, according to all of my numbers. You will notice that Jacob Klinger of Penn Live reported on Friday that the Steelers were projected to have somewhere between $1.3-$1.4 million in available salary cap space after inking all of their draft picks but it’s clear that he failed to take into account roster displacement in the Rule of 51 for the last two draft pick signings.

Now, the NFLPA currently has the Steelers $2,038,795 under the salary cap as of Saturday morning pending the signing of rookie defensive tackle Javon Hargrave as his contract likely won’t hit until Monday. Once it is registered, the NFLPA will likely have the Steelers $1,940,481 under the cap. In other words, I expect my number to be off by $8,083 and quite honestly, that’s not worth me researching to find my error.

In reality, the available $1.9 million in salary cap space the Steelers now have is already spoken for as that will be eaten up by a 52nd and 53rd player and a 10-man practice squad. The Steelers have managed to make it to this point of the offseason without having to restructure a single contract and they really should be applauded for that. In short, the team currently doesn’t have any available salary cap space to work with if you look at future needs and that will need to change by the start of the regular season.

Being as we all know guard David DeCastro will get a contract extension later on during the summer barring him suffering any kind of serious injury, you can count on his current scheduled salary cap charge of $8.070 million to be lowered by around $3 million. If you missed it, here is the projected contract that I put together for DeCastro earlier in the offseason.

Now, that $3 million is a perfect in-season buffer for the Steelers to carry to help protect against injuries and future signings.

While its far from guaranteed to happen, the Steelers could extend the contract of linebacker Lawrence Timmons during the upcoming weeks and months and in doing so, potentially save almost $5 million in salary cap space in the process as long as no new signing bonus is given. You can look at my offseason example of that right here.

As far as other potential future cap clearing goes, veteran kicker Shaun Suisham will remain an elephant in the room the remainder of the offseason. Should he ultimately be released, the Steelers will save $1.875 million in salary cap space, assuming he is displaced on the 53-man roster by Chris Boswell.

As you should be able to clearly see, the Steelers are in great shape when it comes to their salary cap even though several hacks predicted last year that they would be in trouble. While its yet to be seen if the team will ultimately give running back Le’Veon Bell a contract extension later on in the summer, such a deal would likely include a very affordable first-year cap charge.