After Antonio Brown’s contract restructure, the Steelers are now salary cap compliant

When the NFL set the 2018 salary cap, it gave all 32 NFL teams just over a week to become compliant with the new figure, if they weren’t already. One of the teams who had work to do was the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Now saddled with Le’Veon Bell’s $14.5 million dollar salary cap hit, Pittsburgh leaned on another superstar to help them get their books in order. And, after Antonio Brown re-structured his current contract, the team is now in compliance with the 2018 salary cap, per BTSC writer 58Steel and OverTheCap.com.

Antonio Brown was scheduled to make $13.875 million in 2018. This included a base salary of $7.875 million in base salary plus a $6 million roster bonus due on the 5th day of the league year. His cap hit was $17.675 million.

The Steelers converted all but $915,000 of Brown’s salary plus roster bonus ($12.96 million) into a signing bonus. This reduces his cap hit this year to $7.955 million (a $9.72 cap savings). It does increase his cap hit by $3.24 million in each of the last 3 years of his contract.

2019-$22.165 million

2020-$18.34 million

2021-$19.54 million

In other words, the Steelers did just enough to get compliant with the current cap, but don’t think for a second the team is done making moves. There will be cuts made, we can all guess as to who will be released and retained, and more veterans, like Ben Roethlisberger, will be asked to re-structure their current contracts to help alleviate the team’s financial situation. Hopefully to the point where they can actually be active in free agency, as well have enough left over to sign all of their rookies before the start of the season.

The Steelers are far from done with this aspect of their team, and things will only heat up from here. So, stay tuned to BTSC for the best Steelers coverage on the internet.