2021 Steelers Season Recall: Salary cap constraints lead to restructures and releases
Steel City Underground presents our 2021 Steelers Recall: a look back at Pittsburgh Steelers games and storylines from last season.
The Steelers entered the 2021 offseason with a large looming issue: their salary cap.
While the Steelers have never been major players in free agency, instead opting to build their team through the NFL Draft and then re-sign those players later as they achieve a second contract, the organization would find their backs against a wall as the NFL adjusted due to a season where Covid-19 disrupted schedules, lack of attendance, and much more. Always playing the cap tight to the vest, the Steelers were blindsided, as were other teams, by the 2020 season and the effects of the pandemic.
The salary cap would not rise in 2021, as it had consistently for many consecutive seasons, instead falling to a figure lower than the 2020 or 2019 seasons.
With a $198 million cap in 2020, the league would announce that rather than increasing to a projected $210 million per team in 2021, the spending ceiling would dip to $182.5 million for 2021.
With the salary cap officially set, the Steelers had a tall task ahead of them. The lower bar put Pittsburgh in a position of being over $30 million-plus over their salary cap, and in need of getting that number whittled down quickly by the league deadline of March 17, ahead of the impending free agency period.
The elephant in the salary cap room was QB Ben Roethlisberger, due for a $42 million cap hit by himself, accounting for 23 percent of the team’s expenditures. Roethlisberger’s price tag took a bigger chunk of the team’s operational cash with the sharp decline from $198 to $182 million, losing roughly $16 million in cap space that was expected.
The conversation turned from “How much longer will Ben play?” to “Will Roethlisberger be with the Steelers in 2021?”
Would the Steelers do the unthinkable and cut Roethlisberger to get their budget in order? That was a legitimate question asked around this same time last year, but in the end, Big Ben would rework the final year of his contract, adding void years to spread out the impact of money owed to him while also taking a $5 million reduction in pay.
Pittsburgh also restructured the contract of veteran DE Cameron Heyward. Along with Big Ben’s contract adjustment and the retirements of Maurkice Pouncey and Vance McDonald, the Steelers finances were just about in order. Still, they had to be shrewd about their moves, mostly offering one-year contracts with void years built in, spreading the 2021 cap hit over several seasons.
It’s a tactic other teams started employing years ago, but something the Steelers had otherwise avoided doing until it became a necessity in 2021. For the first time, the Steelers built these void years into the contracts of Ben Roethlisberger and Eric Ebron, while adding void years into other signings which were yet to come.
The Steelers also whittled Derek Watt‘s base salary down to $990,000 with a restructure, but some other tough decisions loomed.
With all of the restructure and money-shifting under way, the Steelers were also forced to part ways with long-time inside linebacker Vince Williams. They also attempted to trade CB Steven Nelson, following the re-signing of Cam Sutton, but were unable to find a partner to do a deal and ultimately ended up releasing the former in lieu of retaining the latter.
The upcoming free agency period would be among the most miserable in memory, both in the lack of headline signings as well as key losses: each attributed to the pandemic’s impact on the franchise’s salary cap.
We’ll look back at those free agency moves, or lack thereof, in our next part of the 2021 Season Recall series.
