Cap breakdown by position

Since free agency is about to kick -off on Friday & the Steelers have tendered their RFA's, let's take a look how much each position is contributing to the Steelers' salary cap hit this year. BadMaafala has already done a good breakdown of some of the cap hits & our cap situation in future years. You can check that out here.

EDITED: To reflect the newly released contract terms for Hampton.

RE-EDITED: According to the NFLPA, the Post Gazette is off in their interpretation of Hampton's contract. My original numbers were correct.

I have the listed the players that are under contract beyond March 5th with total cap hit each position would have against the cap if every player counted (more on that later). Out of respect for BadMaafala's post, I will only list the salaries of players if they have a cap hit more than 3 mil that way you can know who's a major contributor to the groups total salary.

Total Special Teams Cap Salaries: $6,177,000

OFFENSE

OL Cap Salaries: $17,969,000

TE Cap Salaries: $7,355,000

RB Cap Salaries: $4,783,000

QB Cap Salaries: $12,763,000

WR Cap Salaries: $9,548,000

Offense's Total Cap Salaries: $52,418,000

DEFENSE

DL Cap Salaries: $21,071,000

LB Cap Salaries: $16,791,000

DB Cap Salaries: $19,275,000

Defense's Total Cap Salaries: $57,137,000

Total Salary Cap Hit: $111,742,000               Cap Room: ~$20 Million
You might be wondering why the totals for the positions don't add up to the total salary cap hit. This is because of the Rule of 51 (only the 51 highest paid players on your roster count towards the salary cap). The position totals were IF every player would count towards the cap. For those of you that love to try to figure out what players the Steelers can/will sign, they will operate like they have 20 million in cap room to sign any free agents & draft picks (the salary cap last year was 127 million and would have gone up some this year). BUT keep in mind that anytime a player is signed don't just subtract their new salary from the cap space to find out how much room is left. Subtract 400K less than their new salary. This is for player #51's salary no longer counting against the cap when he previously was. For example, if the Steelers were to sign Clark to a 3 mil/year salary, we would lose 2.6 million of cap room (3mil-400k=2.6mil).

Now let's pretend you're the GM for the Steelers & it's March 5th. Ryan Clark comes to you and says, "The Ravens have just offered me $XXXX per year, but I want to come back and play for the Steelers. Will you match it?"