The Pittsburgh Steelers entered this week about $700,000 clear of the salary cap. After re-structuring Marcus Gilbert and announcing that they will be re-structuring both Maurkice Pouncey and Mike Mitchell, they will have approximately $11 million in cap space.
I do not believe they are done yet either when it comes to creating more financial room.
Lance Moore and Cam Thomas will be cut soon and I don’t think it will end there. Much of the speculation of the newly created space has centered around two things; Ben Roethlisberger’s expected deal and Jason Worilds.
The Steelers made it clear earlier this evening that Worilds will not be getting tagged and that’s music to my ears as well as many others. He can now dip his feet in the waters of free agency and see where the chips fall.
As for Roethlisberger’s deal, I’m still hopeful this gets done in the next few days but I’ve also learned that anything is possible so stay tuned.
What I really see happening here is that the Steelers are making a serious shift in their free agent paradigm. With Ben Roethlisberger turning 33 years old next week, the Steelers realize that the window is closing.
If they are going to shell out big bucks for their franchise quarterback then they need to put players on the field on both sides of the ball who will perform at a high level. In other words, I believe the Steelers will look to gain even more cap space and will go after free agents on defense who will immediately give this team a chance to win now.
This might seem like a no-brainer but the Steelers have never been big spenders in free agency instead choosing to build through the draft. They then used free agency to fill some spots of need especially for depth.
That particular way of doing things can’t happen when you’ve had the drafting failures Kevin Colbert and the Steelers have had in recent years.
Perhaps I’m reading the tea leaves wrong but I’m pretty confident the Steelers are taking a different approach to free agency in 2015 and I welcome it.
photo courtesy espn.com
