Off for a few days to celebrate my anniversary and my wife comes down with a stomach virus. So I've had a little too much time on my hands. Spoiler Alert: It isn't pretty...
Yuck, wish I could post columns. Some notes: * RFAs and ERFAs are estimated to fill out a full 51 man roster. I feel pretty good about them falling that way but I guess you could make an argument against 1.94M tender for Jordan Berry. In the end I'd be hard to convince otherwise simply because in the past they have leaned towards rewarding 4 year guys. Obviously they will bring competition in for him like they do any other year and maybe they save some money down the road but for March purposes I think he gets the tender. * Jesse James and Martavis Bryant's contracts reflect a base salary of 1.94M due to playing time incentives per the Proven Performance Escalator. They have already accumulated the necessary snaps to reach that incentive. This won't be reflected on sites like OverTheCap until the new league year begins. *The 180,000,000 salary cap is obviously estimated. It's what I've seen used elsewhere and represents an increase of 8.4% from last year. It would probably be safer to use a 178,000,000 number. We'll see where it ends up. Addressing the elephant in the room - Leveon Bell. I just don't see any scenario where they will choose to franchise Leveon and I don't see any scenario where Bell plays on the tag all season and then doesn't test the market. In order to franchise Bell they will have to clear roughly 30M dollars off their Top 51 roster. Look above and tell me where that comes from? Are we really going to do full restructures of Brown, Tuitt and Heyward and release another 6-8 guys to keep a guy on a one-year contract? I just don't see it. This reminds me of 2012 when they offered Wallace 5yrs, 50M in July and when he declined they moved on. They signed Antonio Brown and never gave him so much as an offer when free agency came around in 2013. I think it's similar because of the moves the Steelers made after Bell's rejection. They extended Villanueva and Tuitt and then signed Haden. Those moves represent 33M in cap room against the 2018 cap. I don't see how the make those moves if they think they may tag Bell again in '18.
When I try formatting, it usually ends up like the above. I go with "//" to break things up for visuals, but that's a lot of "//-ing". Nice breakdown though.
I've been one of the more outspoken people in favor of letting Bell walk (actually, trading him) this season. I was frustrated by his holdout this past offseason and for the bull he showed by not working out with the team and getting very rusty. We need less selfishness in the locker room, not more, and a sense of team that helps everyone be focused and on the same page. For all his talent, Bell goes contrary to to a team-first narrative. We can probably do better and be more consistent with a pretty good RB if everything else stays the same. I think the Steelers are preparing for life without him. You can't help but wonder when the day will come when he completely loses it with the amount of touches he gets on a weekly basis. Even the best can only take so much.
If he had a contract he would have been here for camp. Keep Bell and draft another good RB. We need a QB, RB & TE this upcoming draft. No defense early this draft, offense the first 3 rounds. We have to have Ben's successor.
1) According to OTC, we have just under $6 mil that will carryover into next year, but that could be allocated to injury-reserve of $2-3 mil, and more performance bonus you talk about with Bryant/James. Do the following: -Cut Mike Mitchell (saves $5 mil) -Cut Vance McDonald (saves $4.6 mil) -Cut HeyBey (saves 1.2 mil) -Bank of Ben (tell him we need him to play for $5 mil less base salary) Just saved you $15+ mil. There is another 8-10 mil that can be easily saved just based on converting roster bonus money for several players to fully prorated signing bonuses.
The NFLPA public salary report has us at 4.2M. That is reduced everytime they have to add someone to the roster which will likely happen this week at linebacker. Plus we don't know of any NLTBE incentives. And we really don't know what the salary cap is going to be. Might be 180M, might be 175M. Each of them will require a roster replacement. Minimum salary next year is a hair under 500k. So those three savings are reduced by 1.5M. Ben can't be apart of this. Who knows how long he will play. Anything we save is just future dead money maybe as early as 2019. There is but there are ramifications. Just gonna copy and paste this from another conversation in regards to the kind of restructure and releases you are describing... That means in 2019 we will have essentially 25 guys under contract at roughly 150M in cap space. That doesn't include Ryan Shazier, Bud Dupree, Martavis Bryant, Ramon Foster, Mike Mitchell, Vince Williams, Robert Golden, Jesse James, Tyson Alualu, L.T. Walton, Chris Hubbard, Anthony Chickillo, Chris Boswell, B.J. Finney, Jordan Berry, Rosie Nix, Mike Hilton. Can we get all those guys (or their replacements) and our future draft picks signed for 45M? That's a pretty difficult task when you consider the NFL minimum salary for a player with no experience is 500k.
All this makes me hope that much more that they win this year. Bell is such a huge part of the team but he most likely will be gone. Looks like some other casualties too. Still, the Steelers have shown the ability to make it work and stay competitive so I have hope there.
The dagger is..............if/when Bell signs some place else, after throwing around some pie-in-the-sky number $15 mil per year for a couple of years, he will find out that NO TEAM...............not one in the league............even those with $50+ mil in cap space is going to give $15 mil per year average to a ANY RUNNING BACK that will be 26 with some heavy mileage, a history of injury (though better of late), and a suspension risk. There is no market for any such back with those variables. Pitt knows it, Bell's agent knows it, he refuses to accept it. And there are only a handful of OLs that he'd be running behind that are as good or better than the one Pitt has. And when he signs for $10 mil/year with someone, we will all be up in arms saying, "So WTF did he not sign last year for $12 mil/year two years ago"? So frustrating it didn't get done last year as the deal was fair for both sides.
Beach, if you are familiar with google spreadsheets I can fix your formatting problem for you pretty quick. This is what it ends up like - https://live4sportnetwork.com/forum...lts-and-year-to-date.8999/page-90#post-524113
Once you have your spreadsheet published to the web, all you need to do is embed the URL like a regular media (video) file. Ez, peezy!
I don't mean a restructure, I mean the Rooneys & Colbert going to Ben and asking him to play the 2018 season for a base salary of $7 million instead of $12 million. I know that's asking a lot, but not if you consider the following: -What is Ben's career earnings just with Pitt? Something approaching $200 mil? -Rooneys stuck by him when some teams' management would have said, "Time for a change of scenery" long ago. -Pitt has no leverage, but you could ask him if he enjoys his protection at this point in his career and having a stable of weapons, and that $5 million would do a lot to ensure some of those guys that provide the aforementioned stick around one more year. I am assuming they extend Shazier next Summer if he is able to rehab from his current state and actually play again, but any long term deal would probably just shave $1-2 million off his 2018 cap number. He's gonna get $10+ mil/yr average I think. Isn't that what Hightower signed for with New England last summer?
They would never ask Ben and he would never agree if they did. It's a nice thought but it's just not going to happen. Obviously, this was posted prior to the awful news that Shazier had surgery. Thankfully, his option year is guaranteed for injury so whatever happens he will make the 8.7M he is due. If he is able to get healthy and they extend him they could shave a decent amount off his deal. DeCastro's option year was scheduled to count 8.07M against the cap. After his 16M signing bonus and 5yr/50M extension he counted only 5.27M against the cap. A net savings of 2.8M.
