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One week before the start of free agency, the Steelers have an estimated $9 million in salary cap room after they released wide receiver Lance Moore and passed on the chance to assure that Jason Worilds would not sign elsewhere.
The 4 p.m. deadline passed Monday without them using the franchise or transition tag on a player. Worilds really was the only candidate for a tag, but he will now enter free agency next Tuesday without a new contract, free to sign anywhere. The Steelers put the transition tag on him last season at a one-year salary of $9,754,000. They would have to pay him 120 percent of that, or $11.7 million, to do so again. The transition tag gives a team the right to match any contract a player might receive from another in free agency.
The Steelers have not written off trying to still negotiate a new contract with Worilds even after he becomes an unrestricted free agent March 10, but that seems more and more unlikely because he is considered one of the top outside linebackers/pass rushers available in free agency.
The Steelers have nearly $9 million estimated under the NFL’s salary cap, which was revealed Monday by the NFL Players Association to be $143.28 million for each team — $10 million more than last year — not counting the carryover for each team from 2014. The Steelers had a carryover of $778,469. That puts their cap at $144,058,469, according to the NFLPA.
Moore’s $1.5 million salary for 2015 was removed from their books today when they released him. But that will be offset by another minimum-salary player of $435,000, which means they will create slightly more than $1 million in cap room with the move.
The Steelers signed Moore to a two-year contract last year after the New Orleans Saints released him. He caught only 14 passes for 198 yards and two touchdowns.
OverTheCap.com, a site that tracks each team’s salary cap, had the Steelers top 51 individual salary caps totaling $136,331,485, but that was before the team released Moore, so that will drop by more than $1 million. Only the top 51 individual salary cap numbers count until the regular season starts, not the entire roster. Once the season starts, every player counts against the cap, including those on injured reserve and on the practice squad.
The Steelers will likely create even more salary cap room as they negotiate new deals for Ben Roethlisberger and Cam Heyward, dropping their cap numbers for those two players for 2015 as they prorate signing bonuses on the new deals. Roethlisberger counts $18.4 million for 2015, including his $11.6 million salary. Heyward counts almost $7 million, all in salary.
The Steelers created a little more than $6 million in cap room last week by restructuring the contracts of Marcus Gilbert and Mike Mitchell. There was a report they also were going to restructure Maurkice Pouncey to create over $3 million more but that has not yet been done.
There also could be a handful of veterans released, which would create more room.
If, for example, the Steelers release Troy Polamalu or he retires, they will save $3.75 million in his accounting off their salary cap. If they designate him as a June cut, then they would create $6 million in room this year but he would still count $2.25 million on their cap in 2016.
Other veterans who might be released and their cap hits are Brett Keisel, $1.5 million, and Cam Thomas, $2 million.