The Steelers have announced that they have extended Troy Polamalu’s contract through 2016. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The team needs to free up cap space this year, and Troy was coming on the final year of his contract. His 2014 salary cap number was a whopping $10,887,500.

I’ll report the specific numbers when I have them over the next few days, but I expect his extension to be similar to Heath’s, in that his 2014 salary, or a big portion of it, was converted to a cash signing bonus. It’s difficult to speculate exactly how much it will free up, but I would think it has to be at least in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 million.