As expected, the Pittsburgh Steelers have now started contract extension talks with kicker Chris Boswell.
Boswell confirmed on Sunday that his agent and the Steelers started negotiations on a new contract earlier in the week, according to Joe Rutter of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Boswell also reportedly said that he has told his agent to handle the negotiations and that he really doesn’t want to hear about how things are progressing moving forward.
“I’m going to let it play out,” Boswell said, per Rutter.
None of this is surprising in the least as Boswell, who signed originally with the Steelers a little more than a quarter of the way through the 2015 season, is currently playing under a one-year $2.914 million second-round restricted free agent tender he received from the team earlier in the offseason.
Between now and the start of the regular season it’s reasonable to expect that Boswell will sign a new contract that could perhaps result in him being one of the three highest paid kickers in the NFL. Currently, Stephen Gostkowski of the New England Patriots is the league’s highest paid kicker and he’s followed closely by Carolina Panthers kicker Graham Gano, who signed a four-year $17 million contract earlier in the offseason.
It’s very possible that when and if Boswell does finally sign a new contract in the coming weeks that the Steelers will actually clear a tiny bit of 2018 salary cap space in the process. The last Steelers kicker to sign an extension with the team was Shaun Suisham in August of 2014. Suisham, however, only kicked in that 2014 season for the Steelers due to him suffering a serous knee injury during the Steelers first preseason game of 2015 while attempting to make a tackle.
