On Tuesday, my Terrible Take was about Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Chris Boswell possibly getting a contract extension later this offseason. That seems to have been great timing on my part. Why? Because on Wednesday, Steelers special teams coordinator Danny Smith talked to the media and during his session he apparently was asked about Boswell’s contract status heading deeper into the summer.
“He’ll get a new deal at some point,” Smith reportedly said of Boswell on Wednesday, according to Brian Batko of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Smith’s comment about Boswell shouldn’t come as a surprise, however, as the Steelers longtime kicker is now in the final year of his current contract. He’s currently the ninth highest paid kicker in the NFL right now at $4.2015 million per season and on the heels of him having a fantastic 2021 season.
Boswell, now 31, broke his own franchise record for the most field goals made in a single season with 36 in 2021. That was out of 40 attempts for a 90-percent hit rate. He did miss two extra points, though he missed four a year earlier. More notably, Boswell was 8-of 9 from 50-plus yards in 2021, firmly establishing himself as the greatest distance kicker in team history. He is 17-for-21 for his career from the 50-plus range and owns a franchise-record long of 59 yards.
Boswell has completed at least 90 percent of his field-goal attempts in each of the past three seasons and has also achieved that mark in five of his seven seasons overall. His awful 2018 season, during which he went 13-for-20, nearly cost him his job and that’s the only reason he’s not currently giving Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker a run for his money as the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history.
So, what does this all mean as Wednesday comes to close? Well, with Tucker currently deemed the NFL’s highest paid kicker at $5 million per year, we could very well see Boswell slightly top that number later this summer and especially if no other kicker beats him to the punch. In short, we could see Boswell get an extension with a new money average of around $5.2 million by Week 1. Such an extension, and even one as short as two years, could also be structured so that Boswell’s current 2022 cap charge of $4,948,334 either stays the same, or slightly decreases.
As far as I can tell, Boswell, who is scheduled to earn $3.26 million in 2022, hasn’t talked to the media so far during the team’s mandatory minicamp session. If he has, none of his comments have seem to have surfaced. Maybe Boswell will talk to the media on Thursday and before the team breaks for more than month. If he does, expect him to be asked about him potentially signing a new deal closer to the start of the regular season like Smith seemed to insinuate will be the case.
