The Steelers are furiously rewriting contracts to create salary cap space.
Over the past few days, the Steelers created more than $5 million in room under their salary cap, according to NFL Players Association figures, by restructuring the deals of Mike Mitchell and Marcus Gilbert.
The team's salary cap space has climbed to $7,415,167 as of this morning, according to the union. That includes the new three-year contract linebacker Vince Williams signed this week.
The Steelers must account for a bunch of injury settlements that are due, part of the reason they are restructuring contracts to create salary cap room.
Antonio Brown has expressed a desire for a new contract, even though he has two years left on his current deal and the Steelers have a long-standing policy of not offering new deals until a player reaches the point of entering the final year of his contract. The only exceptions they made were for starting quarterbacks.
However, they did advance Brown $2 million on his 2016 salary last year and that could be in the offering again, although there is no reason the team could not advance him, say, twice that much on his 2017 salary. As of now, Brown is set to earn $6,250,000 in salary this year and $8,710,000 in 2017.
Mitchell was due a $5 million salary this year and the Steelers turned $4,115,000 of that into a signing bonus in order to create room this year under their cap. That bonus then is pro-rated over the three years he has left on his contract, or $1,371,666 per season merely for cap purposes _ he still receives his $5 million this season but in the form of the new signing bonus and a new salary of $885,000.
Mitchell's restructuring created more than $2.7 million in salary cap room this year, although it dumps nearly $1.4 million onto the cap in each of the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
Likewise, Gilbert's restructuring created $2.4 million in salary cap space this year for the Steelers. It reduced his salary from $3,950,000 to $760,000 this year and turned the rest _ nearly $3.2 million _ into a signing bonus.
