According to the Thursday salary cap report on the NFLPA website, the Pittsburgh Steelers have gained $2,392,500 in available space. In other words, that means a contract restructure was done.
By the looks of things, tackle Marcus Gilbert was the player the Steelers chose to restructure because dropping his 2016 base salary down to the minimum for his accrued years, $760,000, would result in his cap charge this year of $6,461,000 dropping by exactly $2,392,500. That required Gilbert being given $3.19 million of his scheduled $3.95 million base salary as a signing bonus.
The Steelers ended Wednesday with $2,779,333 in available salary cap space and this did not include the contract that linebacker Vince Williams signed on Tuesday as those numbers have yet to surface. They will soon.
The Steelers still need to account for a 52nd and 53rd player on their final roster in addition to a 10-man practice squad as far as available salary cap space goes. This restructure of Gilbert’s contract will help give them some extra cap space for in-season injuries and we’ll have to wait and see if a contract extension gets done with guard David DeCastro as that would likely create several more million in salary cap space.
Below is a look at Gilbert’s contract now that it has been restructured.
| YEAR | BASE SALARY | PRORATED | WORKOUT | CAP CHARGE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $760,000 | $3,258,500 | $50,000 | $4,068,500 |
| 2017 | $4,000,000 | $3,258,500 | $50,000 | $7,308,500 |
| 2018 | $4,050,000 | $3,258,500 | $50,000 | $7,358,500 |
| 2019 | $4,865,103 | $1,728,500 | $50,000 | $6,643,603 |
