The team's top 51 under contract players right now is counting $195 million on the salary cap books. This includes the option for Vance McDonald (I'll talk about him a bit later).
The salary cap is estimated to be $201 million, so we have only $6 million to play with as of right now.
The main losses, free agents or roster spots to fill with that $6 million are: Bud Dupree (OLB), BJ Finney (G), Artie Burns (CB), Sean Davis (S), Javon Hargrave (DT), Nick Vannett (TE).
Obviously, we can't realistically fit those 6 players into $6 million in space.
So.... we can do some cuts/restructures:
1. Roethlisberger is going to count $33 million against the cap in 2020. There COULD be some creative ways to push this money out into the future. His base salary + roster bonus (projected take home pay) for 2020 is $21 million. Some of that could be converted into a signing bonus if we add a year to his contract or something silly like that.
2. Mark Barron can be cut pre-June 1st and save $5.25 million. This kind of makes sense. A minimum salary player has to fill this spot, but it's still a significant savings.
3. Ramon Foster can be cut pre-June 1st and save $4 million.
4. Vance McDonald can be cut (i.e. team option not taken) and save $5.675 million.
Remember that in the 51-player count, there are many "placeholders" that likely won't make the final team, but make so little (in that $600k to $1 million range) that it doesn't matter WHO is taking up that salary spot, just as long as they are in that price range.
So.... let's say we don't do anything with Roethlisberger for now. We cut Barron, Foster and McDonald. That leaves us (without any restructures) with $20 million and placeholders (i.e. min salary guys) on the roster replacing:
OLB (Dupree), 2 Guards (Foster/Finney), 2 DB's (Burns/Davis), DT (Hargrave) and 2 TE's (McDonald/Vannett)
Those become the big "holes" to fill on the roster.
It is my bet we tag Dupree with all the cap space we gain with cuts. I think we draft offensive guards and TE's and maybe try to get Finney on the cheap. Maybe Vannett on the cheap again as well, depending on coaching staff evaluation.
It's too bad we don't have a 1st rounder, but Fitzpatrick is really replacing Davis/Burns failures to earn a 2nd contract.
Our 2nd and 3rd rounders will most certainly go to O-line and TE's. The problem is that rookie TE's rarely are productive right away as a rookie so even if we get one of the top-3 TE prospects in the 2nd round, the likelihood of immediate impact is probably not realistic. We also don't have a huge amount of money to spend on the position above a minimum salary player.
There just isn't a lot of changes possible. We will cut the dead weight but as far as major additions, it's just not in the cards.
Just hope we hit on our 2nd and 3rd round picks because they WILL have to contribute sooner rather than later. We also have very little room for quality depth. We are a bit top-heavy in our talent right now.
Again... signs point to a tough season to me. Roethlisberger will GREATLY help the offense, but the line is regressing, the running backs will be a committee of mediocrity and the TE position will be woefully thin. On defense, I think we stay pretty good, but I doubt the sacks and turnovers happen as well as this year so we regress from a top-3 defense into a top-10 defense (maybe 7th-10th). Roethlisberger gets beat up, a key injury exposes our lack of depth and young talent and we limp into the playoffs with a 10-11 win team likely looking up to Baltimore (as they reap having a cheap, MVP-caliber QB and are able to fill in all their holes/depth with salary cap room).
That's the forecast right now. Not bad, not great.
