The Pittsburgh Steelers now have a little more 2026 salary cap space to work with thanks to a recent credit they received from the NFL.
According to Troy Chapman of Cap & Trade, the Steelers recently received a 2026 salary cap credit of $3,652,778. That obviously is being applied along with the $16,907,294 in unused 2025 salary cap space the Steelers chose to roll over to 2026. By the way, I have already been accounting for the rolled over portion in all of my previous salary cap updates. Moving forward, I will be applying the 2026 salary cap credit of $3,652,778 in my updates.
So, why are the Steelers receiving such a large salary cap credit from 2025? Well, that’s hard to answer specifically because such cap credits are not itemized. According to Chapman, 28 NFL teams received salary cap credits recently, and the four others received salary cap debits. Some salary credits and debits are often times related to incentives in player’s contracts either being achieved or not achieved. Additionally, there are several times where there will be salary cap credits issued due to player insurance proceeds.
Player insurance proceeds? What the hell is that? Well, I am not going to fully answer that question in this post, but I will link to a 2024 post by Kalyn Kahler on ESPN. If you read that post, you should have somewhat of a better understanding about player insurance proceeds as it relates to salary cap credits.
Did the Steelers have insurance last season on OLB T.J. Watt because of the size of his new contract and the guaranteed money associated with it? While I can’t answer that question with certainty, it’s probably a good bet that they did. Hopefully they did because Watt missed three games last season due to a partially collapsed lung suffered by a dry needling treatment. Remember, Watt signed a contract last offseason and one that resulted in him earning $44 million for 2025.
It’s been a long, long time since the Steelers have received a sizable salary cap credit from a previous season. In fact, this might be the largest one they have ever received. That’s another reason to lead me to believe that this recent credit is likely related to player insurance proceeds and specifically for Watt.
I’m not going to go much deeper into this topic at this point because quite honestly, few of you reading this post care about how the salary cap sausage is made. Let’s just end this post with the facts and those being that the Steelers just received a little more than a $3.6 million salary cap credit for 2026.
As soon as the full contract details for new Steelers WR Michael Pittman Jr. are reported, I will provide an updated look at the Steelers’ salary cap situation heading into the second week of the 2026 league year.
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