The Pittsburgh Steelers will start their 2023 regular season on Sunday afternoon against the San Francisco 49ers and ahead of that game at Acrisure Stadium, it’s time to provide one last salary cap update for the team with it looking like nothing else will be outstanding or needing reporting prior to kickoff.
According to my tracking, the Steelers will enter their Week One game $6,337,970 under the cap. That amount accounts for everything, including the team’s dead money total, 16-man practice squad, Reserve/Injured list, injury settlements, and offseason workout bonus pay. In the graphic above, you can see a breakdown of the Steelers’ 2023 salary cap situation as it sits Sunday morning.
The Steelers entered the 2023 league year having rolled over $4,427,145 in unused salary cap space from the 2022 season. During the offseason, the Steelers restructured the contract of S Minkah Fitzpatrick. They did not, however, appear as though they felt the need to restructure the contract of OLB T.J. Watt. That’s great news in and of itself.
A few offseason contract terminations, CB William Jackson III, CB Ahkello Witherspoon and CB Arthur Maulet most notably, along with a small pay cut taken by WR Gunner Olszewski a few weeks ago, probably played a big part in the Steelers not needing to do a small restructure of Watt’s contract for a second consecutive offseason.
Throughout the offseason, I projected the Steelers as possibly wanting to go into the 2023 regular season with $9 million in available salary cap space to use for in-season practice squad elevations and in-season signings. That budgeted amount wound up being high by $2,662,030. Next year, I will use a budgeted placeholder amount of $7 million for in-season space to help close this projection gap a little.
Moving forward, we can probably expect the Steelers to exit the 2023 regular season with between $3.5 and $5 million. Whatever is left over from 2023 can be rolled over to 2024.
With the 2023 regular season getting underway, I will now move forward with tracking the Steelers’ 2024 salary cap situation. I will provide my first update on that next week.
