Much has been made of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ proportional spending in recent days following the team’s signing of fourth-year OLB Alex Highsmith to a four-year, $68 million contract extension. With his new deal, four of the top five highest-paid players on the team are all defenders, all making over $10 million per season, joining T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and Cameron Heyward.
The Steelers are spending too much money on the defense, some have said. Others simply say that if you’re going to spend that much on your defense, then they better perform. Well, duh. Of course the expectations are high. But that’s not based on their pay. It’s based on their talent, which is what got them paid.
And that’s precisely why it doesn’t really matter all that much what the pay balance looks like on the Steelers’ roster, or at least one of the whys. The talent is the talent and talent gets paid on specific timescales.
Right now, the Steelers’ talent timescale favors the defense. They haven’t swung for All-Pro free agent offensive linemen, and outside of WR Diontae Johnson, the rest of their starting offense is under rookie contracts, including the presumed franchise quarterback, Kenny Pickett.
In contrast, you have All-Pros on defense getting paid as they should, and making up the bulk of what that side of the ball is earning. Outside of Larry Ogunjobi and now Highsmith, these are players signed to relatively modest contracts, from Cole Holcomb and Patrick Peterson to Damontae Kazee and Montravius Adams.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single outlet manage to avoid putting out some kind of article putting the pressure on the defense to perform this year because of what the Steelers are paying these defenders—one of the reasons I’m not going to bother calling any of them out.
I really couldn’t care less about the pay. The standards are high because of what the expectations are for their performance level. The pay is already a reflection of what is expected, not the other way around. there’s no added pressure.
And don’t worry, soon enough we’ll be complaining about an underperforming well-paid offense once again, I’m sure, when the likes of Pat Freiermuth, George Pickens, and Pickett come due for their second contracts, not to mention Broderick Jones.
Beyond these obvious components, there’s also the little matter of the fact that teams are required, by the Collective Bargaining Agreement, to spend. In three-year cycles, the current one ending in 2023, all teams must spend in cash at least 90 percent of the value of the cap during that period.
Not that they needed the Highsmith extension to reach that plateau, but it really comes down to one simple fact: you pay your talent. Wherever that is, you pay for what you have. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions about who to pay, but none of them were hard ones when you look at the top salaries on defense right now. They all earned it.
