salary cap guru's

I will admit, the cap stuff kinda gives me a headache. So I am asking. Espn says we are the 4th worst team when it comes to room. Why? I thought we would be fine but they say we are over projected cap
Can someone help explain how or what we can do to extend some of the guys we need to keep. Ex.. decastro

 

Wish I could help you but this is the face that I make when trying to figure out caps

 

Steelers should trade Timmons. He will be 30 next season and still has a few good years.

He'd be awesome on the Raiders with Mack and A Smith (if not suspended).

I'm going to get some hate but he is a 15M cap hit! That's craaaaaazy!

Steelers would save 8.5M against the cap. Draft Ragland.

Heath is a 7M hit.

 

For better or worse Timmons is a Steeler unless we cut him an eat the dead money. There isn't a team in the league that's going to trade for a 30 year old 15 million dollar one year rental.

 

Raiders have cap to burn. It isn't an issue. They have big holes on defense. And Timmons is 3 years younger than the liability he is replacing.

Raiders base is a 4-3. Their SLB is Lorenzo Alexander. He is a weak point on their D. Raiders also need to shore up their RDE, S and CB spots. They will be hunting for FAs and trades.

Timmons still has a lot of value. He is a great player and underrated across the league. He should have been in 3 or 4 Pro bowls already. Timmons has tremendous position flexibility. Timmons has good speed so hopefully he can play a long time.

15M is just ridiculous for 1 LB though. Especially one who is not a rush specialist.

Where will the money to sign Bell and re-sign Brown come from? Shazier will also be expensive eventually and Tuitt will as well.

You can't afford a superstar at every position.

If the Steelers could get a 2 or 3 for LT they could find a replacement for Pouncey with that pick and trim his salary. There are several good options for G/C in this draft.

The Steelers traded a 6th for a 1 year rental on a 33 year old kicker. Timmons is so so so much better than that. Colbert could make it happen if he wanted to. So... snowball's chance in hell.

 

restructuring players will push the problem a year later at the end you are in trouble, i would ask some pay cut/trade

 

matt spaeth, cortez allen, shaun suisham will save about 7 mil.. timmons should be restructured to save some. with those and ventrone, shark, and a couple of lower level drains on the cap will net us around 10- 12 mil. total. the cap should be going up also. moats and mitchell and heath would be guys that may be restructured. zumwalt and a few of those 600,000 guys that won't make the team will add up. i don't think we are in dire straights yet.

 

Ok so here we are in yet another offseason and I was looking at our cap space and just had so comments I thought I would share. Now before I go any further I just want to say this is just opinions and I am looking to see what everyone thinks:

Timmons is our 2nd highest paid player and is eating up our cap with a 15 mil number, he is in his last year. I think the Steelers will try to extend him and that should change his number this year and give us cap space. the question is does he want to hit the market and cash is or stay here? If he wants to stay here what kind of a deal does he want and we give? Lots of talk about how his play is going down but I think he is a player who always has people talking about his bad plays and forget his good ones. I am not very good at predicting contracts but I would love to see a 4 year extension with a nice signing bonus keeping his cap number down later in the deal. jmo

Pouncey....this one is the one that has me confused with what to do. He is our 4th highest paid player and is gonna eat up a lot of space for a few years...... next 3 years 10.5mil, 11mil and 10.5 mil! As we all know the center position has been a very good one in Steeler history and Pouncey is not exception. However he has been a guy for some reason that just can't stay healthy(some not his doing) and we seem to be able to find a nice replacement. I think with all the young players we have that needs to get paid putting a lot of money here to a guy that is hurt a ton is tuff. When on the field he is one of the best but the question remains can we afford him and guys like Bell. Bryant and Wheaton who are all looking to get paid. Pouncey is not a guy that I feel we cut, he offers us to much to cut him and eat his salary, not to mention we don't have a replacement. However maybe we could trade him to Miami to play with his brother and draft a guy like Allen this year. Again all just options and this is the one player I would love to hear everyone opinion.

DeCastro, Same deal a Timmons however I am all about getting this guy a long term deal this offseason. He has a cap hit of 8 mil, maybe extend him and clear up some cap space, but I want a long term deal here.

Heath....I have a hard time here as he is a favorite of so many myself included. I feel he has a year left at least so with a cap hit of 7.1 mil what do we do? If we cut him he will cost us 3.1 mil over the next 2 years. I say we give him a year extension turn this years salary into cash and lower his cap the next 2 years......thoughts????

Gilbert, A lot of cash here for a RT over the next few years, 6.4, 6.5, 6.5, 5.8 mil! I say what happens to Beachum could be a key. We could sign Beachum long term and maybe after this year cut Gilbert as a June 1 cut saving 4 mil next year while costing us 2.4 over the next 2 years. Of course this don't help us this year unless we June 1 cut him this year but I am saving that spot for Allen......

Allen....June 1 cut, Saves us 4.4 mil costing us 1.3 over the next 2 years. This is the best options for us imo.

Suishum, With the season we got from Boz I am hoping we can trade Susi durning the draft or preseason, if not I am not sure what we do. How many June 1 cuts are we allowed cause if we can't trade him we are screwed. He has a cap hit of 3 mil the next 3 years so he has to go.

These are just a few guys I was thinking we could talk about. I do not like cutting guys and turning it into dead money like we did with Woodley. All that does is put us in cap hell, we can extend a few guys to clear up money but keep in mind we have some young guys coming up who want to cash in as well as some FA that we need to sign this year. So here you go let's have some fun, throw out some thoughts. I am not a guy with all the answers so if I missed something feel free to add it, that is why I started this thread to see our options and all your opinions..........

 

Release Cortez and Suisham with a June 1st designation, then extend DeCastro that will put them around 12 million under the cap.

 

Teams just don't seem to trade a lot, especially at Timmons salary. I see both of them being offered a cut and resign at a more favorable rate with Heath being a one year deal. Kinda like they did with Bettis.

Your right, that's too much money for both of them.

 

thanks, that's what was really concerning me. I just wanted to be sure we could keep decastro and hopefully resign foster. the oline is finally starting to look like the league best. wasn't sure how good they were until everyone seemed to have problems with Denver and we really didnt

 

A look at the cap problems for 2016:

http://www.todayspigskin.com/afc-to...y-cause-big-problems-for-pittsburgh-steelers/

 

Timmons will be extended to lessen the cap hit. He will get some more up front and it will be a cap friendly deal. He stays for 3 more seasons. He will not go into the season making that coin but he is a Steeler and will remain. And restructuring is out of the question. They are finally getting out from under Marshmallows 8 mill and Troy's 2.5. Going to take a hit for releasing the payroll waste Cortez Allen.

2016 Age:29 $8,750,000 Base
$6,381,250 Restructuring Bonus
$15,131,250 Total
$6,381,250 Dead cap

 

We could also extend him and change is cap number....also would a team be interested in him if he was to come out and say he would look for a long term deal?

 

You have to be careful when you start looking for cap space on defense alone since the offense already has a 25 million dollar cap lead over the defense in salary, pouncey would be a good place to start, the offense cap is 87 million and the defense is 62 million, of course ben puts a dent in the Os payroll, but still more money is being spent there and with a retooling going on with the defense I think more needs to be spent on the defense and the offense needs to take a hair cut along with timmons to be fair about it....

 

Timmons restructured in Sept, 2015. LT freed cap space last year that's why he's worth so much this year haha.

Steelers have a habit of backloading contracts and rewarding veterans for their prime years.

Pouncey isn't going anywhere this year. Realistically he finishes his contract with the Steelers after 2019. Pouncey's dead cap reduces from 11.6 to 8.5 to 4 to 1 over the next 4 seasons.

Heath will play out this last year of his contract. He's still really good and you're not going tonfind a TE that's better than him that will play for the 4M he saves the team.

Timmons is literally the only Steeler that it makes sense to trade because that saves 8.5M against the cap.

Timmons can't be restructured as he is in his final year.

LeVeon's contract is up after next year. They're going to have to pay him Timmons money.

 

If Timmons is staying (which is probable) the Steelers should eat Timmons' cap hit this year. Extending him only continues the cycle of overpaying veterans 10 years or more into their careers.

Eat the hit this year. Front load Timmons next contract say 4 years 35M. 10 10 8 7 with any bonuses etc paid up front so that the Steelers can cut him 3 years from now if they need to without a big dead cap hit.

Timmons cap hit would decrease as Bell's cap hit increased. Wheaton and Bryant and Shazier and Tuitt are all up for new contracts at the same time 2017. Going to need space and even then someone is gone.

 

I am not sure of the ins and out of the contract world but why can't we extend Timmons and turn this years salary into a signing bonus? That would make LT a Steeler a few more years, lower his number and create cap space.

 

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The Steelers have two options regarding Timmons. They can cut him and eat the dead money or extend him with a deal similar to Miller or Troy. Assuming he takes the same type of deal as those two we can keep him for 3-4 more years and drop his cap hit.

 

That makes absolutely no sense.

The 15M doesn't disappear by extending Timmons it just overpays him over a longer period of time.

Pushing cap hits back further and further is how the Steelers get to the same place every offseason.

Bite the bullet now. Steelers need the cap space DESPERATELY in 2 seaaons.

I guess you can only see 1 year ahead in terms of cap space.

You'd be perfect for the Steelers fromt office.

 

The steelers are in good cap shape this offseason. There are obvious cuts and restructures. Don't believe anything you read that says we are in bad shape

 

Not really.

At 30, Timmons cannot expect to hit his current salary on the open market.

If Timmons is willing to turn his current salary (8.75) in to a mix of signing bonus and some guaranteed guaranteed salary on a 2 year extension, the steelers would both reduce his cap this year and get 2 additional seasons out of him. Given that he has 6.3 in bonus money on the cap already... The choice is something like

6.3 in dead 2015 space vs a restructure that looks something like
3 years/9.0 guaranteed/7.5 signing bonus.

2016: 1.25 salary / 2.5 signing bonus / 6.25 remaining restructure bonus = 10.0 cap hit (saving 5.0 in cap this year)
2017: 3.5 + 2.5 = 6.0 cap
2018: 4.5 + 2.5 = 7.0 cap

 

Extending a player saves cap space IF:

A) The player is willing to take considerably less money in their next contract like Troy in 2013 who extended for 2 years 11.75M. That was a big pay cut.

B) The extension is before the end of a rookie contract so that the big money gets spread into the rookie deal like 45M over 5 years instead of 4 years.

Timmons is due 15 million dollars this season. Why would he accept an extension unless it was an even better contract than his last one?