The Pittsburgh Steelers recently signed S DeShon Elliott to a two-year contract extension and now that the finer details related to that deal have been reported, I can now update the team’s 2025 salary cap situation as of Friday afternoon. This update also includes the recent signing of LS Tucker Addington. That was a one-year minimum salary contract, by the way, and does not include any guaranteed money.
With Elliott and Addington contracts now filed, the Steelers are $18,857,294 under the cap with their Rule of 51 as of Friday afternoon. As noted in my last cap update, the Steelers now have TE Donald Parham Jr. on the Reserve/Injured list with a split salary charge of $540,000. That amount won’t officially go against the salary cap until the removal of the Rule of 51 at the start of the 2025 regular season.
While $18,857,294 is still a lot of salary cap space for the Steelers to work with, several forthcoming costs, most of which should be fairly predictable, must be afforded closer to the start of the regular season. They 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. Currently, those predicted forthcoming cap costs that will ultimately need to be absorbed total out to around $13,657,200.
The Steelers are still more than likely signing OLB T.J. Watt to a contract extension later this offseason. As I have previously noted in other cap update posts, should that ultimately happen with Watt, it’s a good bet that his current 2025 cap charge of $30,418,695 will decrease by around $8-$9 million.
With Elliott’s extension now out of the way, I still think it’s very possible that the Steelers will give K Chris Boswell a $3 million or so cash raise this summer. Should that ultimately happen, the Steelers should easily be able to afford his cap charge going up as a result of such a 2025 cash raise.
At this point of the offseason, it does not appear as though the Steelers will need to do any contract restructurings this summer. Should that prediction wind up being wrong, TE Pat Freiermuth would likely be the first player they would restructure. I highly doubt that will be needed, however.
Currently, the Steelers 2025 cash spending for their top 53, plus cash payments outside of that, and a future practice squad, currently sits right around $260 million. I expect the team to spend around $287 million in cash in 2025, so that leaves a deficit of around $27 million, give or take. A Watt extension could possibly eat up around $20 million of that cash spending deficit. A Boswell raise could eat up another $3 million or so in 2025 cash. That still leaves roughly another $4 million or so in cash the team could spend this summer if my projections are right on.
As an addon, depending on how the initial 53-man active roster ultimately plays out, 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 cut later this summer. 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, just to name a few.
In closing, it’s always mindful to remember that both cap space and cash spending are mentioned in this post and those are two different things. The main takeaway here as June ends is that the Steelers remain in fine shape when it comes to cap space and cash spending.
Related Items:Cash, Chris Boswell, Cole Holcomb, Contracts, Cordarrelle Patterson, Dean Lowry, DeShon Elliott, Donald Parham Jr., Max Scharping, Pat Freiermuth, Salary Cap, T.J. Watt, Tucker Addington
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