In the matter of a couple strokes of the pen, the Steelers freed up just over $13 million. And a couple of more could free up even more salary cap space.
They quietly reworked the deals of Stephon Tuitt and David DeCastro at some point last week to free up all of that cap space and quickly went to work with it, signing exclusive rights free agents Matt Feiler and B.J. Finney to one-year contracts and restricted free agent Roosevelt Nix to a four-year deal.
If they need more cap space -- which they will if they have plans to sign Le'Veon Bell or make any moves in the free agent market -- the next up for a possible restructure would be Antonio Brown.
Like Tuitt, Brown signed his new deal last year and the team always signs these long-term contract extensions with an eye toward future flexibility. That's how they were able to lower Tuitt's cap hit from $13.6 million to $5.4 million.
It takes a little creative maneuvering, but the player still gets his money and the team gets extra cap space.
In Brown's case, he's scheduled to count a whopping $17.65 million against the team's cap in 2018, including a $7.875 million base salary to go along with a $6 million roster bonus. The Steelers should be able to shift some of that around to pick up at least $6 million, if not more, in cap space.
Those two moves, coupled with their recent signings, puts the team just over $7 million under the projected 2018 salary cap of $180 million. It could be more than that, it could be a little less. But we won't know for sure until sometime right after the NFL Scouting Combine at the end of this month.
In the meantime, the Steelers can continue to work on deals with two of their three potential restricted free agents, Chris Boswell and Anthony Chickillo. They definitely want to work out a long-term deal with Boswell, similar to how they just took care of Nix. Chickillo, meanwhile, could simply get a one-year tender offer from the team.
Either way, both are getting raises.
And the Steelers still have other cap-related moves they can make, such as getting Mike Mitchell to take a pay cut or face release.
• A potential contract extension with Ben Roethlisberger also could free up some cap space. Roethlisberger is scheduled to count $23.2 million against the cap in 2018 and has two years remaining on his current deal.
He'd like to play at least three more seasons and extending him beyond 2019 would help lower his cap hit for this season. The team would like to do that, obviously, but as president Art Rooney II said earlier this week, they've never been in a situation such as this with a 35-year-old franchise quarterback before.
• Many times, fans look at these restructures as the player giving something up. Typically, however, they make out on the deal, getting future salary turned into signing bonus. It's like your boss coming to you at the start of the year and saying, "Instead of paying you your salary over the course of the next 52 weeks, we're going to give you 80 percent of it now."
• The way the Steelers restructure contracts every year is one reason why they don't like to give out large signing bonuses or give out big guarantees in contracts. It takes away some of their future flexibility.
Brown understood that last season when he accepted his four-year, $68-million extension. While Brown did get $19 million guaranteed and $19 million in signing bonus, that pales in comparison, for example, to the $49 million in guaranteed money DeAndre Hopkins got in his deal with the Texans last year and is under the $42 million A.J. Green got.
Brown's deal made him the NFL's highest-paid wide receiver, but he took less guaranteed money than some of his contemporaries to sign it. I bring this up because Le'Veon Bell said recently that the guaranteed money in the 5-year, $60-million he turned down last offseason was the sticking point for him.
• That kind of maneuverability is why I laugh every year when ESPN's Bill Barnwell comes out with his annual column ripping the Steelers for mismanaging their salary cap because they're right up against it every season. He seemingly writes it every year. And in nearly every case, he's been wrong.
The only time the Steelers have really had hard cap issues was in 2011 and 2012, when the cap remained stagnant and they had a roster loaded with aging talent left over from three Super Bowl runs in six seasons.
• Speaking of salary caps, I'm no Bob Nutting apologist, but after seeing the Cubs shell out $126 million over six years for Yu Darvish on Saturday, is there any way the Pirates can compete in Major League Baseball without a salary cap?
Seriously?
The deal for Darvish, a 31-year-old pitcher whose career record is 56-42, could increase to $150 million if some escalators are hit. If you're a small-market team such as Pittsburgh or Oakland, how are you competing with that?
It's the fourth $100 million contract given out by the Cubs, which ranks second only to, you guessed it, the Yankees.
Simply spending more money isn't the answer because the Cubs, Dodgers and Yankees of the world will always have more money. If they make a mistake with a free agent, they just go out and get another to replace him. If the small-market teams make a mistake on a signing, it hamstrings the franchise for years to come.
Nutting and the other owners in small markets are partly to blame for baseball being the only major professional league to not have a salary cap. And perhaps that's because they also don't want to have a salary floor in place.
They're also making money in the current system. And for them, that's the bottom line.
However, even if the Pirates increased their salary payout to, say, $150 million this season, which would be the largest in team history, by far, the Cubs would just go spend more. Don't think for a second that's not what they're thinking in Milwaukee right now after the Brewers made big waves a couple of weeks ago, only to be outflanked again by the big spenders.
As the Steelers continue to show, salary caps can be worked with -- if you actually have one in place.
• Perhaps it should be fans who insist on a salary cap. Then again, fans in Chicago, New York and other big markets like the system just the way it is.
• Spring training starts this week. I still look forward to it every year, but I'm an eternal optimist. This Pirates' roster, however, has the look of a 70-win team, at best. And that's the view of the eternal optimist.
• The Duquesne men's basketball team was a good story for a while, but the wheels have apparently come off, as usual, as evidenced by the team's loss at home Saturday to last-place Fordham. By 23 points. The Dukes have now won just three of their past 10 games.
• As bad as that 3-7 record is in their last 10 games, at least the Dukes aren't Pitt, which heads into Sunday's game against Louisville having lost all 12 of its ACC games. That said, if the Panthers are going to avoid a winless ACC record this season, their next three games after facing Louisville are against fellow ACC bottom-feeders Boston College, Florida State and Wake Forest. They have to win at least one of those games.
• Has college football grown to the point where we really need two national signing days? Really?