Steelers owner Art Rooney II didn’t leave much room for interpretation during his state of the Steelers address last week about whether Ben Roethlisberger will be welcomed back for the 18th and final season of his Hall of Fame career.
“We’ve been, I think, upfront with Ben in letting him know that we couldn’t have him back under the current contract, and so I think he understands we have some work to do there,” Rooney said.
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The Steelers want Roethlisberger back, and Roethlisberger wants to come back. The only sticking point is what to do with his $41.25 million cap number in a year when the salary cap is expected to be close to $35 million less than original projections. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed down revenue across the league, which will drive down the upcoming cap number.
If Roethlisberger takes up about 23 percent of the cap, the Steelers will find it impossible to add players to a team looking to improve after a first-round playoff exit. They have 19 unrestricted, restricted and exclusive rights free agents, some of whom they would like to sign. They also have players they would like to extend and still would like to add a player or two via free agency.
But if the Steelers are $25 million or $33 million over a projected $180 million salary cap, most of that won’t happen. Roethlisberger’s number has to be more manageable.
“You know, I think we’d like to see Ben back for another year if that can work, but as we’ve said, there’s a lot of work to be done to see if that can happen,” Rooney said. “There may need to be decisions that are made on both sides for that to happen. We’ll have more conversations, and we’ll have more conversations internally, we’ll have more conversations with Ben, and obviously, we’ll have to know what the cap number is at some point to really finalize some of those decisions.”
It won’t be too difficult to make Roethlisberger’s 2021 cap hit more manageable, but it will require two things: eating more dead money next year and structuring his contract in a way the Steelers have avoided doing in the past.
Roethlisberger has one year left on the two-year, $68 million extension he signed during the 2019 offseason. The Steelers’ cap issues trace back to that deal: a league-high cap hit for their soon-to-be 39-year-old quarterback with diminishing skills.
The Steelers were in dire need of cap space before the 2020 season, especially after deciding to franchise tag Bud Dupree. To create space under the new CBA, they restructured contracts to get under the cap. They targeted Roethlisberger first because of the amount of money they could push into the future and the belief he would be a viable player, even after elbow surgery ended his 2019 season after six quarters.
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By restructuring Roethlisberger’s contract in March, before the impact of the pandemic was known, the Steelers saved nearly $10 million in cap space for 2020 but added nearly that much to his 2021 cap hit. Roethlisberger’s salary for 2021 is $4 million with a $15 million roster bonus due on the third day of the new league year.
The rest of the contract ($22.25 million) already has been paid out in guaranteed money. So the only money that can be pushed around or manipulated is the $19 million in salary and roster bonus.
Whether Roethlisberger retires, is released, takes a pay cut or signs an extension, it will happen before the roster bonus hits and after the league sets the 2021 cap number, which means sometime between late February and March 20.
The Steelers want Roethlisberger back at a lower cap number, and Roethlisberger wants to come back. There are options to accomplish that.
Option 1: A straight pay cut
It has happened before with the Steelers and around the league to players more prominent than Roethlisberger.
Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis took a pay cut two years in a row at the end of his career to stay with the Steelers. His first pay cut ($3 million) came when the Steelers signed free-agent running back Duce Staley in 2004. Less than a year later, with Staley, Verron Haynes and Willie Parker on the roster, Bettis took another pay cut to play one final year in 2005.
In 2016, five-time league MVP Peyton Manning and his suspect arm took a $4 million pay cut that led to a Super Bowl title.
It’s unlikely Roethlisberger would agree to take a straight pay cut and unclear whether the Steelers even would ask him to do so. At $19 million, Roethlisberger is a bargain. Actually, it’s a little below a bargain. The average quarterback salary in 2020 was slightly more than that number.
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No matter how poorly he played during the final month of the season, Roethlisberger’s 33 touchdowns, nearly 4,000 yards passing and 12-4 record are worth more than that in the open market, even at his age. A typical deal for somebody like Roethlisberger has been about one year/$25 million or two years/$50 million, and surely Roethlisberger could get that kind of offer from a team.
Philip Rivers spent 16 years with the Chargers before signing a one-year, $25 million deal with the Colts. Drew Brees and even Tom Brady were in that neighborhood with their last contracts.
Kaboly’s take: I know Roethlisberger told The Athletic’s Ed Bouchette that he’s not worried about money and his contract, but I can’t see him taking a pay cut. Forget that the market value doesn’t suggest that, but it’s not his fault his cap number is where it is at $41.25 million. Plus, the ego involved in agreeing to take a cut just doesn’t seem likely when there are better options.
Option 2: Pay cut with incentives
Manning agreed to a $4 million pay cut in 2016 but had his contract structured in a way that he earned back that money by reaching incentives. What that did was free cap space upfront and then write in unlikely incentives.
In Manning’s case, his bonuses were $2 million if the Broncos made it to Super Bowl 50 and $2 million if they won it. The Broncos did both. The Steelers could do something like that with Roethlisberger. They can take part of his $15 million roster bonus and turn that into an incentive.
Kaboly’s take: Why would Roethlisberger agree to that unless the incentives are easy to reach? It’s an option but an unlikely one.
Option 3: Extension
The two sides always can agree to an extension, then they will be able to mutually decide his future. It would allow the Steelers to have a say in 2022 if they want to. They really don’t like doing one-year deals, but Roethlisberger would be the exception. This is a valid avenue only if the two sides really think there will be a 2022 together. It seems like this would be the absolute worst-case scenario and the Steelers likely would move on if this is Roethlisberger’s demand.
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Kaboly’s take: A straight extension wouldn’t be smart for the Steelers. Their cap number would be huge again next year if they take that route with a routine one-year, $25 million extension. If the two sides want to return next year, then go on a one-year basis. There are much better ways to appease both sides than a straight extension.
Option 4 — Restructure with voidable years
This is by far the best option for both sides, but that would mean the Steelers would have to step out of their comfort zone to get it done. The Steelers have a set way of doing contracts, and adding voidable or “dummy” years at the end of a contract isn’t part of the equation.
I can’t recall a time they ever did it, but this is the perfect scenario.
Roethlisberger has $19 million that can be restructured in some way with his current contract, but there is no place to push it into the future as this is the final year of his deal. If he restructures with voidable years, most of that money converts to a signing bonus with a cap hit spread over the duration of the contract. Once the contract is voided, the remaining cap hit immediately becomes dead money. That would then push all the restructured money to 2022 in the way of dead money.
It would allow the Steelers to get out from under a devastating cap problem in 2021 and move it to next season, when the salary cap might be closer to where it was pre-pandemic.
The more voidable years added, the less Roethlisberger will count against the cap in 2021, but the more he will add in dead money in 2022.
So, for instance, if the Steelers fully restructured Roethlisberger’s $19 million 2021 salary with four voidable years, it would save the Steelers about $14.4 million cap space in 2021, but all of that would transfer to 2022 as dead money. Fewer voidable years means less salary-cap relief in 2021 but less of a cap hit in 2022.
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It sounded like Rooney was open to everything in terms of contracts from this point forward and not necessarily just Roethlisberger’s.
“You know, I think it’s fair to say that we may have to look at doing some things differently just based on the size of the challenge we have going into this year,” Rooney said. “So, I’m not going to say that this is just going to be business as usual under these circumstances. It’s going to be a very unusual year, a very difficult year from a cap standpoint, and so we’ll really have to look at if there are adjustments that we need to make to how we structure contracts. We may have to look at that.”
Kaboly’s take: This is, by far, the best option. Roethlisberger gets his full salary this year and the Steelers get a large chunk of cap space back now. Sure, you are then paying a big number for Roethlisberger not to be on the roster next year, but it will be a much smaller cap hit than what they face this year. And considering the cap should go up considerably, it’s the way they should go.
(Top photo: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
