The Pittsburgh Steelers are dealing with veteran DL Cameron Heyward sitting out of voluntary workouts as he seeks a new contract extension. Heyward is the longest-tenured Steeler and a four-time All-Pro, but he’s coming off a season where he played just 11 games after suffering a core muscle injury. Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette believes the Steelers will want to see how Heyward returns from the injury before giving him new money.
“From a business perspective, I don’t think it’s really smart for the Steelers to do a long-term deal now, but this is kind of a special situation with Cam. Longtime veteran, Walter Payton Man of The Year award winner, good community guy. So there’s a couple different layers to this,” Fittipaldo said. “From a football and business perspective, I think 100 times out of 100, the team’s gonna sit back and see how he comes back from that injury before they throw out any new money to him,” Fittipaldo said during an appearance on The PM Team on 93.7 The Fan today.
The Steelers might not get a real opportunity to see Heyward in action before they have to make a decision on extending him. The team will likely get a look at him at mandatory minicamp and probably training camp, assuming he doesn’t hold out. Given that minicamp and training camp are mandatory whereas this portion of OTAs are not, it would be more of a problem if Heyward didn’t show up or participate in those. Given that the Steelers don’t work out contracts during the season, those will be the best two opportunities for the Steelers to get a look and see how Heyward is recovering from his injury.
As of now, the situation doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue, and Heyward just said he’s looking out for what’s best for him. The longer things drag on, though, the more likely things are to get ugly and go south. That’s the last thing that the Steelers are going to want to deal with. It would be in the team’s best interest to work something out with Heyward before training camp, but they’re going to have to balance keeping a fan favorite with making sure it’s not a bad investment to keep around a 35-year-old coming off a serious injury.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the Steelers handle things with Heyward, and Dave Bryan had a great breakdown of what a potential contract could look like. Things likely won’t happen in terms of an extension until later this summer, but it would be a surprise if a deal wasn’t done before training camp.
