The Pittsburgh Steelers obviously have veteran cornerback Joe Haden under contract for the 2019 season but beyond this upcoming year his future is a little bit murky. Haden, who is now in the final year of the three-year, $27 million contract that he signed with the Steelers in August of 2017, talked briefly about his potential future past the 2019 season on Wednesday.
According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com on Wednesday, Haden, who turned 30 a few months ago, said he would like to retire as a member of the Steelers if at all possible. Even so, the former first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns did reportedly add on Wednesday that while there have been no talks with the Steelers so far this offseason about a possible contract extension, he’s ready for them.
We’ll have to ultimately get the full context of what Haden said on Wednesday about his contract situation but on the surface, it sounds like he might be expecting extension talks to happen later in the summer. We’ll see if that’s the case and nobody should be surprised if that ultimately happens.
Back in early May, I wrote about the possibility of Haden receiving a contract extension later this summer and once training camp gets underway and included in that post were details as to how such a deal might ultimately be structured along with a possible new money average. In short, a new money average of around $13-$14 million for Haden as part of a two-year extension seems about right for both sides as that would then place him in the top 10 highest-paid cornerbacks in the league.
Also as I wrote in that previous post, the Steelers could even potentially do an extension with Haden that would result in his currently scheduled salary cap charge in 2019 of $11,916,668 remaining roughly the same and perhaps even lowering a little bit depending on how much total money he’s given this year in base salary and signing bonus to sign.
Haden is the Steelers best cornerback and judging by his 2018 season, he still has plenty of quality football left in him. He wants to finish his career with the Steelers and it’s hard to imagine the organization not wanting the same. In summation, when two sides want to get a deal done, it likely gets done and thus I expect we’ll hear about contract extension talks between the Steelers and Haden and his representation getting underway sometime after the start of the team’s annual training camp in late July.
