The Pittsburgh Steelers recently made a big trade with the Miami Dolphins, essentially landing CB Jalen Ramsey and TE Jonnu Smith in exchange for S Minkah Fitzpatrick. The Steelers had a little bit of contract finagling to do with Ramsey and Smith as a result of that trade and the details related to those two deals finally surfaced on Tuesday. With the finer details of those two contracts now figured out, I can pass along an update as to where the Steelers now stand when it comes to their 2025 salary cap.
For starters, Ramsey’s 2025 cap charge with the Steelers is now $4.904 million and Smith’s cap charge for this coming season is now $5,127,500. After trading Fitzpatrick, the Steelers will incur a dead money charge of $6.855 million in 2025 and another one in that same amount in 2026.
With Fitzpatrick gone and Ramsey and Smith now added, the Steelers are $25,425,794 under the cap when it comes to the team’s Rule of 51 total. Yes, the result of that big trade with the Dolphins was the Steelers gaining a little bit of 2025 salary cap space, even when accounting for the dead money charge of Fitzpatrick this year. That amount now under the matches what the NFLPA has listed on its latest public salary cap page update on Wednesday morning.
While $25,425,794 is certainly quite a lot of salary cap space for the Steelers to still work with at this point of the offseason, several forthcoming costs, most of which are fairly predictable, must be afforded closer to the start of the regular season. Those costs include a full practice squad, a 52nd and 53rd player, injury settlements, offseason workout bonuses, and extra buffer cap space to use for the regular season. Those predicted forthcoming cap costs that will ultimately need to be absorbed total out to around $13,657,200.
As has been noted for quite a while, the Steelers will more than likely sign OLB T.J. Watt to a contract extension prior to the start of the 2025 regular season. Should that ultimately happen, it’s a good bet that Watt’s current 2025 cap charge of $30,418,695 will decrease by around $8-$10 million.
I still like the chances of the Steelers giving K Chris Boswell a $3 million or so cash raise prior to the start of the regular season as well. Should that happen, the Steelers should easily be able to afford his 2025 salary cap charge rising just a bit.
With the bulk of the Steelers’ offseason moves now seemingly made, it does not appear as though the team will need to do any contract restructurings prior to the start of the regular season. Should that look ahead wind up being wrong, TE Pat Freiermuth would likely be the first and only player they restructure. I highly doubt it will come to that, however, and especially if the Watt contract extension gets gone this offseason.
Currently, the Steelers’ 2025 cash spending for their top 53, plus cash payments outside of that, and a future practice squad, sits right around $275 million. I expect the team to spend at least $287 million in cash in 2025, so that leaves a new deficit of around $12 million, give or take. A Watt extension could possibly eat up around $20 million in new cash for 2025. A Boswell raise could eat up another $3 million or so in 2025 cash. Both of those moves would have the Steelers easily exceeding a predicted 2025 cash-spending floor amount of $287 million.
As an add on to us discussing cash spending and salary cap space, depending on how the initial 53-man active roster ultimately plays out by the start of the regular season, we could see the Steelers save a little bit of both cap space and cash should a few players currently in their Rule of 51 wind up being jettisoned. Some notable players to watch when it comes to such a thing include DL Dean Lowry, ILB Cole Holcomb, RB Cordarrelle Patterson, and G Max Scharping.
In closing, I always like to remind everyone in these update posts that both cap space and cash spending are mentioned within them and those are two different things. The main takeaway here in the middle of July is that the Steelers remain in more than fine shape when it comes to cap space and cash spending for 2025.
