The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2024 season ended on Saturday night, and now that it has, we can start paying close attention to the team’s salary cap situation for the 2025 season. Part of that close attention begins with knowing what the Steelers are carrying over into 2025 in terms of unused salary cap space from the 2024 season. According to the NFLPA, via Over the Cap, that amount is $6,831,465.
To put that $6,831,465 into some sort of perspective, $2,340,192 was the amount of unused salary cap space from the 2023 season that the Steelers carried over into the 2024 season. To add a little more perspective to that $6,831,465 carryover amount, the Steelers freed up $7.206 million in 2024 salary cap space last April when they restructured the contract of OLB Alex Highsmith just before the start of the 2024 NFL Draft. In short, the Steelers will carry over most of that cap space they freed from the Highsmith restructuring.
The Steelers should officially announce their first set of Reserve/Future signings sometime this week. Several of those players will likely be ones that ended the 2024 season on the team’s practice squad. One of those players should be OL Doug Nester. Once the team officially announces the first wave of those players, we hopefully will have at least 51 players under contract for 2025 so that we can have a true Rule of 51 amount to work with to look ahead at the team’s salary cap situation way ahead of the start of the new league year in march.
Currently, and not including WR Mike Williams, whose contract is set to void in February, the Steelers have 39 players under contract for the 2025 season. That number does not include Nester, by the way. The total cap charges for those 39 players currently under contract for the 2025 season should be $226,932,364. Additionally, the Steelers currently have $45,335 in dead money on the books for the 2025 season. This means that prior to the Rule of 51 being established, the Steelers currently have $226,977,699 in total salary cap costs for the 2025 season.
Several NFL salary cap experts currently project the NFL cap number for the 2025 season to be $272.5 million. Based on that estimate, the Steelers would be $52,353,766 under that number and prior to the Rule of 51 amount being established. Before you run off boasting about that $52,353,766 available salary cap space, please understand that other forthcoming costs above and beyond the filling out the Rule of 51 will need to be taken into account.
Remember, the Steelers still have a rookie class, a 52nd and 53rd player, a full initial practice squad, and offseason workout bonuses that will need to be accounted for between now and the start of the 2025 regular season. Additionally, a placeholder for available salary cap space to work off of once the 2025 regular season gets underway must be accounted for at some point as well. I will cover all of those estimated forthcoming salary cap costs in an upcoming post.
The Steelers are sure to have a few roster cuts before the start of the 2025 league year in March, and thus, a lot of salary cap space should be freed up when that happens. I will also go over a few of those likely forthcoming contract terminations in my upcoming post.
In closing, do know that the Steelers should be in a very good spot this offseason when it comes to 2025 salary cap space and flexibility within that.
