Question about Wallace and the cap issue

Ok so everyone keeps talking about cap issues with the Steelers and how it will limit them signing Wallace to a long term deal.

Why is this an issue? People like Aaron Smith, Farrior, Foote, Hines, Will Allen, etc. should not be counting to the cap. Despite great careers as Steelers, you have to let them go because they are old, expensive backups. Why let one of the best young receivers in the NFL go to keep old dudes for the nostalgic factor?

 

If it was only about signing Wallace, it wouldn't be a problem. Being about 10 mil over the cap (say 7 after the Colon restructure), we still have to get at least 10 million under the cap for all of our other free agents, plus whoever we draft. If we have to go to 19 mil under the cap to sign Wallace, we're going to have to make cuts to players who are still integral to our success, not just older players who may not contribute this year. No matter how much Ben and Harrison restructure.

 

big snack should be cut too

 

Okay, I'm going to link to Steeler Depot for this, and merely give some sort of a rundown to what we would have to do to franchise Wallace. http://www.steelersdepot.com/2011/09/st ... -contract/

Figuring Wallace with a first round tender (~$2.7 mil) and our other RFAs averaging third round tenders, the Steelers are a little bit more than $15 million over the cap. We would need to cut Casey Hampton ($4.9 mil) and HInes ($4 Mil) and Keomuatu ($3.5) and Larry Foote ($3 mil). That puts us just under the salary cap for our top 51 signed players.

To make up the extra $4.3 million, we'd have to say goodbye also to Aaron Smith ($2.1 million), Farrior ($2.8 mil) and Jonathon Scott ($2.2 million).

And, just as a point, those six cuts would make our dead money over $10 million for the year, effectively lowering our cap to $110 million.

There are other people we could let go of, but not with much in the way of cap hits. And Harrison and Roethlesburger could restructure, maybe making a grand total of $8 million in savings. Its assumed that any team will need about $10 million for draft picks and udfa's that they pick up.

 

Plus the added cap money from the TV contracts right? Or has the bump already been included?

 

That doesn't come in until next year. Lot of talk that the league is planning on a $10 mil+ bump for next year.

 

Given that they knew this was going to be the year they were hurting, it didn't make sense to give Colon a big payday last year.