The Pittsburgh Steelers signed wide receiver Antonio Brown to a four-year contract extension on Monday and the early reports indicate the deal as including $68 million in new money. Since then, a few more details have been reported.
According to Adam Shefter and Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, Brown received a signing bonus of $19 million. Additionally, it is being reported by those two that Brown’s originally scheduled 2017 base salary of $4.71 million will remain unchanged.
Now, assuming those early numbers are correct, Brown’s new cap charge in 2017 would be $17,418,334 as he had $8,908,334 in previous bonus proration. However, Fowler appears to have forgotten about this in his recent story. Brown’s scheduled cap charge for 2017 heading into Monday was $13,618,334.
Now, we can probably expect Brown’s contract to include at least one roster bonus in 2018 and perhaps another one in 2019. As soon as more details are known I will present the full contract for you.
Let me caution you that ESPN is the only outlet reporting these numbers right now so in no way should they be considered official. The only thing I would question is if the Steelers indeed left Brown’s $4.71 million base intact.
