The Pittsburgh Steelers no longer have to deal with wide receiver Antonio Brown as they traded the disgruntled player to the Oakland Raiders Saturday night and reportedly for two selections in this year’s draft, a third and fifth rounder. Another tiny positive related to Brown being dealt now is that the Steelers will no longer be on the hook for the $2.5 million roster bonus the wide receiver was due on the fifth day of the new league year.
However, the Steelers will eat a lot of dead money as part of them trading Brown to the Raiders. With Brown being shipped off to the Raiders Saturday night, the Steelers will incur a dead money charge in 2019 of $21.12 million, which is the outstanding bonus proration the wide receiver still had on the books.
Brown was previously scheduled to count $22.165 million against the 2019 salary cap so the Steelers will at least save $1.045 million in space prior to roster displacement due to them trading him.
The Steelers restructuring of Brown’s contract just a little more than a year ago wound up hurting quite a bit as part of this. That restructure was done to free up $9.72 million in cap space for 2018.
The Steelers fortunately won’t have any cap repercussions for dealing Brown past the 2019 season. The trading of Brown won’t be official until the start of the new league year next week.
