The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2021 season is over, already eliminated from the postseason after suffering a 42-21 loss at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. They just barely made the postseason with a 9-7-1 record and a little help from their friends.
This is an offseason of major change, with the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger, the possible retirement of general manager Kevin Colbert, and the decisions about the futures of many important players to be made, such as Joe Haden, Stephon Tuitt, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and others—some already decided, some not.
Aside from exploring their options at the quarterback position, the top global priority, once again, figures to be addressing the offensive line, which they did not do quite adequately enough a year ago. Dan Moore Jr. looks like he may have a future as a full-time starter, but Kendrick Green was clearly not ready. Chukwuma Okorafor was re-signed, but Trai Turner was not. James Daniels and Mason Cole were added in free agency.
These are the sorts of topics among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked. There is rarely a concrete answer, but this is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all their uncertainty.
Question: How much of Larry Ogunjobi’s $8 million contract is based on incentives—and what are the conditions of the incentives?
The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t waste too much time after learning that Stephon Tuitt would be retiring before they sought out ways to spend the cap space that they got back as a result. They turned their attentions to the area from which they just lost, and ended up signing sixth-year veteran Larry Ogunjobi to a one-year contract.
It’s very rare for the Steelers under Kevin Colbert to sign any prominent outside free agents to just one-year contracts—typically, they sign at least two-year deals. It was even less common for them to include any type of incentives in their contracts.
The team’s one-year, $8 million contract with Ogunjobi, however, reportedly has incentives, with $8 million being the total figure that he can potentially earn if he meets the conditions of all of those incentives.
We don’t have all of those details yet, so there are still questions. What is the base value of the contract between his base salary and signing bonus? How much of it is in incentives? Are they likely or not likely to be earned incentives—which affects whether or not they have to be accounted for against the cap?
And equally importantly, what are the conditions of those incentives? The manner in which they were reported seemed to imply that at least a healthy portion of it was based simply on playing time, which would be appropriate for a player coming off an injury who already had a contract reneged this offseason due to a failed physical. But are there other conditions in there, such as for Pro Bowls, sack numbers?
