A fan asked me how the Pittsburgh Steelers can keep making signings when they have very little cap space left. For instance the Steelers signed Former-Pitt running back Larod Stephens-Howling, who played with Todd Haley in Arizona, to a contract with a $620,000 cap hit when they only had about $650,000 in cap space. Following that move they drafted nine players, signed 15 undrafted rookie free agents and yesterday they signed veteran punter Brian Moorman. How is that possible?
Well, it all comes down to the rule of 51. NFL teams’ salary caps are only based on the top 51 paid players on their team. That means right now when the Steelers have 90 players on their roster 39 of them do not count against the salary cap. When the season starts they will finalize their 53-man roster and at that point two players will still not count against the final salary cap for the 2013 NFL season.
So when the Steelers signed Larod Stephens-Howling prior to the second day of the NFL Draft they added $715,000 to what they have to pay players in 2013. That number, however only counts $620,000 against the cap in 2013 according to the minimum salary benefit rule. Plus once Stephens-Howling’s contract is added to the Steelers salaries it replaces one of the contracts already in the top-51. The lowest contracts in the top-51 at this point are worth $480,000. That is pretty much just extra cap space because it gets removed to add the new contract making the cap hit only $140,000.
That means after signing Stephens-Howling they still had around $500,000 in available cap space. The Steelers nine draft picks won’t be signed until June. At that point the Steelers will have $5.5 million available in extra cap space from their cutting of Willie Colon. If a team cuts a player after June first they can save their entire salary in that year and move part of the money into the next year as a dead money hit. That means the Steelers will save themselves the $5.5 million in June and pay about $4.3 million next season for Colon even though he is no longer with the team.
According to Ian Whetstone, arguably the best Steelers cap guy on Twitter (follow him at @IanWhetstone), we can project that the Steelers will consume about $1.626M in cap space to sign them, factoring Top 51 rules. So based on Whetstone’s numbers my previous prediction was pretty close. What that also means is that with Colon’s $5.5 million coming free the Steelers will have almost $4 million in cap space to make other moves. Steelers GM Kevin Colbert said they haven’t ruled out brining back Casey Hampton and Max Starks. The Steelers will also likely look to resign Doug Legursky for offensive line depth and could look at some other veteran free agents once they have the cap room to do so.
What this also means is that yesterday when the Steelers signed veteran punter Brian Moorman to a one year deal it was likely for the veteran minimum at which for Moorman would be $940,000. After displacing another of the $480,000 contracts in the top-51 that deal will count an extra $460,000 against the cap. So basically after that move the Steelers really won’t have much cap space at all. Maybe somewhere around $50,000. That means they could still cut and sign players not in top-51 because they won’t affect the cap, but signing a veteran that would affect the cap is almost impossible at this point unless a corresponding move was made.
