On the heels of the NFL announcing the 2025 salary cap number last week, a byproduct of that is us now knowing what the exact amount of the raise that WR George Pickens will receive this coming season as part of him earning a Level Two PPE (Proven Performance Escalator) raise.
We briefly mentioned this in a recent post and now I will go into further detail in this post.
For starters, we have known for a while that Pickens would at least be locked into a Level Two PPE raise in 2025.
Reviewing the situation with Pickens, he was locked into receiving at least a Level Two PPE raise for 2025 after playing 76.0% and 86.7%, respectively, of all offensive snaps in his first two NFL seasons. Entering the 2024 season, Pickens had a shot at qualifying for a Level Three PPE raise but to secure that, he needed to be an original ballot Pro Bowl selection. That obviously did not happen.
Now, here is what the CBA says about Level Two PPE raises.
A player selected in the second through seventh round will qualify for the Level Two PPE if he participates in 55 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays in each of his first three regular seasons. The amount of the Level Two PPE is the difference of the original-round tender in the player’s fourth season and his Year 4 rookie salary (minus any signing bonus prorations), plus $250,000. This amount is then added to the player’s year-four base salary.
With the 2025 salary cap number established last week, also established were the restricted free agent tender numbers. They were passed along by Tom Pelissero of NFL Media.
As you can see in the tweet by Pelissero, the original-round restricted free agent tender amount for 2024 is $3.406 million. Add an additional $250,000 onto that and you get $3,656,000. That is Pickens’ new base salary number for 2025 as part of his PPE increase.
As for Pickens’ cap charge in 2025, it will now be $4,178,670 as the wide receiver still has $522,670 in previous signing bonus proration on the books.
Let it be known that other Steelers blogs have this amount for Pickens being wrong. That is why you really need to be careful where you get your salary cap updates from.
As stated in my latest cap update post on Twitter, the Steelers should now be $63,692,766 under the cap as of Friday night.
