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Steelers 2015 Off-Season Salary Cap Monitor

deljzc

deljzc

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Okay.

The new cap number appears to be $143.28 million (pending an official press release).

On March 2, 2015 our current TOP-51 cap usage is $134.39 million.

CAP ROOM: $8.89 MILLION


The new league year and free agency start at 4:00PM on March 10th.

As the off-season progresses, I will just use this thread to kind of update where things are. I am not going to update immediately after every transaction. We can guess, but it will take a few weeks to post to some of the better salary cap websites around.
 
deljzc said:
Okay.

The new cap number appears to be $143.28 million (pending an official press release).

On March 2, 2015 our current TOP-51 cap usage is $134.39 million.

CAP ROOM: $8.89 MILLION


The new league year and free agency start at 4:00PM on March 10th.

As the off-season progresses, I will just use this thread to kind of update where things are. I am not going to update immediately after every transaction. We can guess, but it will take a few weeks to post to some of the better salary cap websites around.
Click to expand...

5 millions for the rookie class right?
 
Does that figure include or exclude the Pouncey restructuring (which was not official even though it was reported last week)?

Also, is anyone willing to run through the various scenarios with Troy Polamalu? What is the cap impact of him retiring? Or what if we cut him with the post-June 1st designation?
 
It doesn't cost that much for the rookie class.

Remember, up until the start of the season, we count the top 51 players. The bottom of that list right now count about $500k each.

So when we "sign" a rookie draft pick, he replaces one of the top-51 players.

The only rookies last year that counted more than 500k on their salary caps are Shazier (1.73 million), Tuitt (840k) and Archer (550k).

So signing the top 3 draft choices last year displaced THREE 500k salary guys off the TOP-51 and used up about $1.62 million of our cap room. Remember, this doesn't happen until AFTER June 1st as well so any player we release with a post-June 1st designation normally provides plenty of room to sign the draft class.
 
SteelerAl said:
Does that figure include or exclude the Pouncey restructuring (which was not official even though it was reported last week)?

Also, is anyone willing to run through the various scenarios with Troy Polamalu? What is the cap impact of him retiring? Or what if we cut him with the post-June 1st designation?
Click to expand...

The number above includes the re-structuring of both Pouncey and Gilbert.

A post-June 1st designation for Polamalu would free up $3.75 million NOW and an additional $2.25 million AFTER June 1st (which we would count as dead money in 2016).
 
deljzc said:
It doesn't cost that much for the rookie class.

Remember, up until the start of the season, we count the top 51 players. The bottom of that list right now count about $500k each.

So when we "sign" a rookie draft pick, he replaces one of the top-51 players.

The only rookies last year that counted more than 500k on their salary caps are Shazier (1.73 million), Tuitt (840k) and Archer (550k).

So signing the top 3 draft choices last year displaced THREE 500k salary guys off the TOP-51 and used up about $1.62 million of our cap room. Remember, this doesn't happen until AFTER June 1st as well so any player we release with a post-June 1st designation normally provides plenty of room to sign the draft class.
Click to expand...

thanks for the input. Karma
 
Thanks deljzc. How much would cutting Cam Thomas and Moore give us? Plus, wouldn't a Ben extension also give us more $$? We'll have a decent amount to work with.
 
bmoritz said:
Thanks deljzc. How much would cutting Cam Thomas and Moore give us? Plus, wouldn't a Ben extension also give us more $$? We'll have a decent amount to work with.
Click to expand...

Cutting Cam Thomas saves $2 million

Cutting Lance Moore saves $1.5 million

But remember, you take OFF that $3.5 million, but then you immediately ADD two minimum salary players @ $500k each to make sure you are still counting 51 total players.


Any projected Ben Roethlisberger contract extension should reduce his current $18.395 million cap allocation for 2015 but that all depends on how any new deal is structured. I can't project exactly how much would be saved until a deal gets done.
 
deljzc said:
The number above includes the re-structuring of both Pouncey and Gilbert.

A post-June 1st designation for Polamalu would free up $3.75 million NOW and an additional $2.25 million AFTER June 1st (which we would count as dead money in 2016).
Click to expand...

The paper we can't link to says Pouncey's deal has NOT been restructured yet, FYI.
 
Moore never got himself going. Hurt early in the year then got into Tomlin's doghouse. Worked to our advantage when Bryant played himself onto the field more.
 
Hines57 said:
Moore never got himself going. Hurt early in the year then got into Tomlin's doghouse. Worked to our advantage when Bryant played himself onto the field more.
Click to expand...

He was an extreme liability in terms of run blocking...
 
A pretty good rundown on the Steelers salary cap situation. Although it does have two pretty big mistakes. 1) Their projections seem to be based upon acting as if the Pouncey restructure has already happened, so they show us with a little over $9.6M and 2) They have not yet updated to show the release of Lance Moore.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/pittsburgh-steelers/cap/

There is also this site: http://overthecap.com/salary-cap/pittsburgh-steelers, which does not reflect the updated higher cap limit or the release of Lance Moore, but does accurately reflect that the Pouncey restructure has been finalized.

Either one of the above are good for figuring out Top 51 salaries, dead money, and salaries that come into play with displacement. i.e. you can use their numbers to figure out the Steelers cap situation for yourself if you desire.

Edit: I would also be leery of the numbers tossed out by some media types as some don't seem to apply the "Rule of 51" and instead look at the total salary of ALL players on the Steelers roster, which is not the number that is used for cap purposes at this time.
 
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Kaboly has us $13M under the cap via twitter. Not sure what he is including to get to that number. We carried over some of last year's unused cap space but not a ton. Once Ben's deal is done that cap number will open up and we will be in business for some UFAs.
 
I wish to **** they would get Ben signed this week before F/A starts since that would help out the cap as well. Dump Polamalu and Keisel as well. We must move on. If they do these things this week, we probably add another 5-6 million to the available cap space.
 
steelhurt said:
I wish to **** they would get Ben signed this week before F/A starts since that would help out the cap as well. Dump Polamalu and Keisel as well. We must move on. If they do these things this week, we probably add another 5-6 million to the available cap space.
Click to expand...

I don't think Ben's contract is going to help the cap very much (maybe it saves a million or so). And really, they don't need it to. By cutting Troy and Cam Thomas, they should have all the cap space they need this offseason. BTW, if they want to cut Troy with a post-June 1st designation, they have to wait until March 10th to do so. I get the feeling they are deciding whether to keep Cam Thomas or Keisel which is why they are still both under contract.
 
Ben doesn't help much. If we extended Ben and Heyward, cut Thomas and Troy it would be good. Heyward would actually reduce our cap hit this year.Troy will most likely be a June 1 cap cut so his money will be on the books till then and used to sign draft class. Don't think of his $$$ as being used for free agents.
 
SteelerAl said:
I don't think Ben's contract is going to help the cap very much (maybe it saves a million or so). And really, they don't need it to. By cutting Troy and Cam Thomas, they should have all the cap space they need this offseason. BTW, if they want to cut Troy with a post-June 1st designation, they have to wait until March 10th to do so. I get the feeling they are deciding whether to keep Cam Thomas or Keisel which is why they are still both under contract.
Click to expand...

Bens extension will save more than a million or so. His cap hit this year is 18m. The way they tend to structure contracts, as the years increase, so does the cap hit. As an example, when Ben signed his first big deal, his first years cap hit was a little over 8m. Ben will pocket a lot more money, but that signing bonus will be spread out throughout the length of the contract in terms of cap hit. Even if they don't backload it a ton, he could still save several million on this years cap.
 
insaniti said:
Bens extension will save more than a million or so. His cap hit this year is 18m. The way they tend to structure contracts, as the years increase, so does the cap hit. As an example, when Ben signed his first big deal, his first years cap hit was a little over 8m. Ben will pocket a lot more money, but that signing bonus will be spread out throughout the length of the contract in terms of cap hit. Even if they don't backload it a ton, he could still save several million on this years cap.
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The $18 million includes a bunch of money that has already been paid to Ben and that counts under the salary cap whether we extend Ben or not. Salary cap nerds can give the exact numbers but his salary for 2015 is $11 million and change. That means $6 million and change is the charge we have to carry no matter what. So when you add Ben's 2015 salary (whatever it is in the restructured deal), plus the pro-rated signing bonus charge, plus the $6 million, I think you are going to get close to $18 million. I really doubt you are looking at $13 million.
 
A contract that STARTS by paying Roethlisberger $1 million in base salary and a $25 million signing bonus would save us about $5.5 million on our salary cap.

Please be aware that would certainly not be all of Roethlisberger's guarantees in his next contract. He will likely be looking at $55-$60 million guaranteed to be pocketed in the first three years of the deal. But even with that assumption, you can see a new Roethlisberger contract will save us some moeny on this year's cap. It's not $1 million. It's not going to be $8 or $9 million either.

Likely in that $5 million range.
 
This site appears to have already updated Pouncey's restructure:

http://overthecap.com/salary-cap/pittsburgh-steelers

Top-51 total is $136.28 million.

Cap room right now is about $7 million. Waiting on Polamalu's decision. Waiting on extensions to Roethlisberger and Heyward. Waiting on Cam Thomas to be released.

Could open up significantly more money....
 
I doubt we release Cam Thomas.
 
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