The Steelers have restructured the contracts of Lawrence Timmons, Antonio Brown, Ben Roethlisberger and LaMarr Woodley in the last three days. Timmons’ restructure saved the team $5 million against the cap in 2013. Brown and Roethlisberger’s restructures saved the team a total of around $9 million dollars. There are also rumors that Woodley has already restructured his contract, but it hasn’t been officially announced yet.
Roethlisberger’s restructure is the latest of the Steelers work to get under the cap before the March 13th deadline. The Steelers saved $6 million against the cap with Roethlisberger’s restructure according to Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Roethlisberger’s base salary for 2013 was set to be $11.6 million with a cap hit of $19.5 million. $9 million of his base will be converted into a signing bonus and his cap number will move to $13.5 in 2013. The Steelers could have turned as much as $10.7 million into a bonus and saved a bit more money in 2013, but $6 million in cap savings puts them under the NFL salary cap.
At the start of the off-season the Steelers cap number for the 2013 season was around $133.4 million. According to ProFootballTalk the NFL cap number may exceed $123 million for the 2013 season. That would put the Steelers $11.4 million over the cap.
With these three announced restructures the Steelers now sit around $2 million under the cap. The numbers for Woodley’s restructure aren’t yet known, but he will, likely, save the team enough to put them around $6 million under the cap. However, according to Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review he believes the Steelers could choose not to finalize the restructure of Woodley. That would show a lot of concern about the Steelers feelings moving forward with Woodley.
2012 marked the second season in a row that Woodley was hampered by injuries and questions about his conditioning have arose since the end of the season. If the Steelers choose not to move his money into the future by restructuring his contract it would be a really bad sign for Steelers fans. Not only would it show a lack of faith in Woodley, but it would mean more cuts would have to be made to clear enough cap space for the Steelers to do what they want in free agency as well as sign their draft picks.
