Predicting a new contract for Chris Wormley with the Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers 2020 offseason has progressed appropriately since the beginning of the league year. With a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place, the Steelers were able to restructure contracts, offer tenders, use the franchise tag, sign free agents, make their draft selections, and get their undrafted rookie free agents under contract. With a focus on getting their draftees under contract in the coming weeks, the Steelers will also be looking to sign some players to either a new contract or a contract extension.

While some of these new deals may not come until the summer, it’s not out of the question for player representatives and the Steelers to be working on something now. With that said, which Steelers going into the last year of the current deal are likely to be given a new contract before the 2020 season begins?

Rather than focus on all the players, let’s tackle one at a time. With each player, it will first be determined if they should receive a new deal along with how much would be a fair contract to both parties. This exercise is meant to just be fun and speculative as we all get to play general manager and salary cap guru for a day. The biggest question with the remaining players is if a contract would be better before this season or next offseason.

If you wish to give a basic contract answer without diving too deep into numbers, simply skip over the italicized section. If you are the kind of person who would like to see how the contract would affect the salary cap, here it is...

Coming up with an exact contract can be tricky. Rather than get into roster and work out bonuses or different amounts per season, we’re going to estimate the salaries as simply as possible. For whatever deal the player gets, the first year will have all but $1 million put into a signing bonus which will get spread over the life of the contract. For example, if a player were to sign a three-year contract for $10 million per year, the first year would have a $1 million base salary and a $9 million signing bonus. Therefore, the bonus would be spread out to $3 million over each season where the player would count $4 million dollars for 2020 and $13 million for the other two years.

One other factor which needs to be considered is if the player brings any dead money from the previous contract. To account for this in a simple manner, throw it into the salary cap hit for the first year of the players deal. Using the above example, if a player had $4 million in dead money on their last contract, the salary cap hit for their first year would be $8 million.

After looking at a deal for: Cam Heyward, Bud Dupree, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Alejandro Villanueva, Matt Feiler, James Conner, and Mike Hilton, now let’s see what kind of contract Steelers’ fans would like to work out with Chris Wormley now rather than play the 2020 season before making a decision.

Chris Wormley

Age: 26
Years: 3
Draft: 3rd round, 74th overall (Baltimore)
Previous Contract: Rookie deal
2020 salary cap hit: $2.133 million
Dead Money: None

Here are the top contracts average per year (AYP) at the 3-4 DE position according to overthecap.com:

Aaron Donald: $22.5 million
J.J. Watt: $16.7 million
Leonard Williams: $16.126 million (franchise tag)
Kawann Short: $16.1 million
Jurrell Casey: $15.1 million
Stephon Tuitt: $12 million

Wormley ranked 63rd among all qualifying NFL defensive interior linemen in 2019 according to Pro Football Focus. Here are the players under contract beyond their rookie deals who ranked closely to Wormley:

t-61. Rodney Gunter: $6 million
t-61. Christian Covington: $1.5 million
t-63. Sheldon Rankins: $7.69 million (5th-year option)
t-65. Maliek Collins: $6 million
t-65. Corey Peters: $4 million
68. Brandon Williams: $10.5 million

Notes: The whole notion of giving Wormley a new contract before he plays with the Steelers may be far-fetched, but with the salary cap hit of over $2 million it’s not the team-friendly deal many thought the Steelers would be getting since he was on his rookie contract. Wormley’s 2020 salary cap number is more than Minkah Fitzpatrick, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Stefen Wisniewski. If the Steelers worked out a small extension in order to lower his cap hit for 2020 it could make sense, but there’s no reason to break the bank for player who has yet to put on the Steelers’ uniform.

So now it’s deal time! Perhaps the first question should be a completely different game show: Deal or no deal? Should the Steelers look to sign Chris Wormley before he even plays for the team in the 2020 season? If so, what should the deal look like? Please leave your response with the number of years and the average salary per season in the comments below.

Next time on Let’s Make A Deal: Cameron Sutton.