We learned earlier this week that Pittsburgh Steelers safety Sean Davis has missed all of the team’s 2019 OTA practices to date due to an unspecified injury. Davis, however, is expected to back on the field sooner rather than later. We also learned this week that Davis, the Steelers 2016 second-round draft pick out of Maryland, has yet to have talks with the organization about him potentially signing a contract extension later this summer.
According to Jacob Klinger of pennlive.com, Davis, who is now in the final year of four-year rookie contract, has yet to hear from the Steelers organization concerning an extension.
“Nah, not yet,” Davis said.
In the grand scheme of things it still might be too early to draw any hard conclusions concerning Davis and him potentially signing a contract extension between now and the start of the 2019 regular season. Quite honestly, contract discussions between the Steelers and Davis and his new agent, Drew Rosenhaus, might not even get underway, if they do at all, until the team reports to Latrobe for this year’s training camp. Rosenhaus, by the way, also represents another Steelers defensive back hoping to get a new contract this offseason, cornerback Mike Hilton.
At a minimum, Davis is probably going to be looking for a new contract that will have a new money yearly average of at least $6.5 million, as that’s what would put him in the top 15 highest paid safeties in the NFL right now. However, he might be hard-pressed to get that kind of money from the Steelers this summer based on the overall quality of his play to date that has included him playing just one full season at free safety. We’ll see.
In case you’re curious, the 2019 franchise tag amount for safeties was $11.15 million and it’s currently projected to be a little more than $13 million in 2020. In short, if the Steelers are unable to come to terms on a contract extension with Davis between now and the start of the 2019 regular season, he would need to be franchise or transition tagged next offseason to prevent him from testing unrestricted free agency.
Currently, Davis is scheduled to have a salary cap charge of $1,300,398 in 2019 of which $1,007,313 is the base salary he’s set to earn. If he were to ultimately sign a contract extension later his summer, his cap charge would be expected to increase by at least a few million.
The Steelers currently have $1,140,513 in available salary cap space for 2019 pending the numbers of the rookie contract signed on Thursday by cornerback Justin Layne. In short, the Steelers will have a little less than $1 million in 2019 salary cap space come next week so something needs to happen to create some room before any other players are signed to lucrative extensions.
As for when Davis will begin practicing this offseason, he told Klinger he expects to begin working next week when the team begins their third and final week of OTAs.
