Veteran quarterback Mitch Trubisky signed a two-year contract extension earlier this offseason to remain with the Pittsburgh Steelers through 2025. At least that’s what it looks like on paper, but that’s only at the team’s behest. As has been reported, Trubisky received no new guarantees as part of the extension, including no new signing bonus.
That leads Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk to speculate that the extension was more of an ultimatum, with the purpose of lowering his 2023 salary cap number. Due to earn a base salary of $8 million this year, the Steelers turned $6.92 million of that into a signing bonus that can now be spread over three years.
The extension reportedly includes base salaries of $4.25 million in 2024 and $5 million in 2025, with a $1 million roster bonus for each year. That’s already a decline from the two-year, $16 million deal he initially signed last offseason.
But, of course, the Steelers were viewing him as a potential starter then, before drafting Kenny Pickett and watching him develop over the course of his rookie year. Now it’s clear to them that Trubisky will only ever be a backup on their roster.
So instead of what would essentially be a one-year, $8 million contract, the extension now looks like a three-year, $19.25 million deal, which is the compensation remaining to him through 2025, of which only $6.92 million is guaranteed.
But does this really indicate that the Steelers approached Trubisky and said that they would cut him if he didn’t sign an extension because they wanted to lower his cap hit? After all, while they did successfully lower his cap hit through the extension, they did so by guaranteeing him nearly $7 million.
They could have added void years to his contract if all they wanted to do was reduce his cap hit. Because of that, I have a hard time reading this extension as an ultimatum. They obviously, it seems to me, wanted to get him extended, even if, yes, under terms that better reflect the clarity of his role moving forward.
What the Steelers now have is a series of three one-year deals for Trubisky, owing him $5.25 million in compensation for 2024 and $6 million in 2025. They could dump either or both amounts by releasing him before the noted roster bonuses kick in.
“As the source put it, it appears Trubisky accepted the two extra years to avoid being cut before making $8 million in 2023, with little chance of seeing that kind of money elsewhere”, Florio wrote, but he doesn’t even approach the subject of using void years.
It’s also worth noting that the Steelers have worked out extensions in the past with no signing bonuses. They did that with Troy Polamalu and Heath Miller toward the ends of their careers, signing each to two-year extensions that allowed them to spread out their cap hits further. And if they kept playing, all’s the better. That’s the deal with Trubisky as well.
