The Pittsburgh Steelers have signed quite a few players since the start of the 2025 NFL league year and with seemingly all of those recent transactions now being filed with the NFLPA, I can pass along an updated look at the team’s salary cap situation on this Thursday.
According to my salary cap bookkeeping as of Thursday morning, the Steelers are currently $34,436,766 under the cap when it comes to their Rule of 51 accounting. This amount does include the team’s $3,578,669 in dead money charges currently on the books for 2025 as well. It also includes all prorated signing bonus amounts for players who reside outside of the team’s top 51 cap charges. Also accounted for is the $6,831,465 in carryover salary cap space from 2024 that was not used.
As of the time of this post, the Steelers have 73 players under contract for the 2025 season.
With roughly $34.5 million in available salary cap space as of Thursday morning, the Steelers still obviously have more than enough room to accommodate an expensive one-year contract for a veteran quarterback such as Aaron Rodgers.
While signing a veteran quarterback such as Rodgers to a one-year contract without any void years would likely eat up most of the Steelers’ remaining salary cap space, it’s important to keep in mind that an offseason contract extension for OLB T.J. Watt would result in his current salary cap charge of $30,418,695 decreasing drastically. In fact, that Watt cap charge decrease would probably come close to covering the outstanding annual cap expenses the team expects to have closer to the start of the 2025 NFL regular season.
When it comes to the forthcoming expected salary cap expenses that the Steelers are likely to incur by the start of the 2025 regular season, that projected amount has not changed since my last update. The projected total of those forthcoming salary cap expenses remains at $15,737,131, or nearly $16 million. That puts the Steelers in real time at a projected effective usable salary cap space amount of $18,699,635 ahead of them signing a quarterback such as Rodgers and getting a contract extension done with Watt.
While the Steelers still have the ability to free up quite a bit more of 2025 salary cap space by restructuring the contracts of TE Pat Freiermuth and OLB Alex Highsmith, a combined total of $15,097,917, it still doesn’t appear that the team will need to go that route as we sit here in late March. That obviously could change, however. The team could also still decide to part ways with players currently in the Rule of 51 to clear up some additional salary cap space as well. The current list of players in the Rule of 51 will surely change by the start of the 2025 regular season.
If any of you are reading this post and you are curious about the Steelers’ cap spending total as of Thursday, I currently have the top 51 total at $225,846,329, which is 80.89% of the NFL’s 2025 salary cap amount of $279.2 million. Obviously, an expensive one-year contract for a quarterback such as Rodgers would add significantly to that cash spending total.
The Steelers also will have roughly $10.5 million in additional cash on the books for their 2025 draft class and that assumes that they remain without a second-round selection. On top of that, a contract extension for Watt could easily eat up roughly another $20 million or so in additional cash. Roughly another $7 million in cash will be spent to finalize the 53-man roster, practice squad and offseason workout bonusses.
When and if the Steelers sign a quarterback such as Rodgers to a one-year contract, we’ll have a much better idea as to where the team’s cash spending for the 2025 season should wind up.
Below is my updated salary cap data table for the Steelers based on all reported contracts. Remember this full table of data is only an estimation but it does account for all players added by the Steelers through Thursday morning. If you have any questions about the team’s current salary cap situation, please feel free to ask them in the comments below.
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