Today’s free agent analysis for 2024 focuses on Pittsburgh Steelers OLB Markus Golden. A nine-year veteran, he just completed his first season with the team on a two-year Veteran Salary Benefit contract. Golden provided quality play as a reserve behind T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith, including four sacks.
Player: Markus Golden
Position: Outside Linebacker
Experience: 9 Years
Free Agent Status: Unrestricted
2023 Salary Cap Hit: $1,092,500 (Veteran Salary Benefit contract reduced from $1,317,500)
2023 Season Breakdown:
The Steelers found their outside linebacker depth unsatisfactory in 2022 after getting a long look. T.J. Watt missed much of the season due to injury, forcing Malik Reed and Jamir Jones into action. The team began addressing it in the 2023 NFL Draft with Nick Herbig in the fourth round. Then they added Markus Golden as a veteran free agent.
Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin admitted going into the regular season that he felt “a lot better” about the outside linebacker depth than he did a year ago. Reed was a late August trade acquisition in 2022. Jones was there primarily for special teams.
The Steelers only signed him to a one-year contract on a Veteran Salary Benefit deal. That means Golden will be a free agent again in the coming months. But with the spark he provided off the bench, there’s no doubt they will want to re-sign him.
In just 230 defensive snaps played, he recorded four sacks and six tackles for loss with 10 quarterback hits. He only had two and a half sacks a year prior with the Arizona Cardinals as a full-time starter. That number was an outlier, however; he had 11 sacks in 2020.
He may be past his prime, but Golden proved ahead of becoming a free agent that he still has a lot left in the tank. He is a complete defender who holds up well against the run. While a downgrade from the Steelers starters’ lofty standards, he is valuable depth that would represent a bargain if re-signed under the same terms.
Free Agency Outlook:
The question is, will Markus Golden face the same terms this offseason as he did a year ago as a free agent? Part of the reason that he remained unsigned until after the draft was because his sack numbers were down. He got them back up now in modest playing time.
He still earned multi-million-dollar contracts as recently as 2022, so it’s not as though the league forgot about him. The problem is he turns 33 this year, and it’s fair to wonder if he can play starter snaps and still be effective at this point in his career.
The Steelers may be able to re-sign him on another Veteran Salary Benefit deal. But they also have a history of signing players they like under similar circumstances to modest multi-year contracts. They signed Miles Killebrew, for example, to a two-year, $4 million contract in 2022 after playing out a Veteran Salary Benefit deal in 2021. Could they do that for Golden, too? Well, perhaps not at 33.
